


The Executioner

by TheLadyFrost



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse), Resident Evil - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Freeform, Graphic Description, Graphic Description of Corpses, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sexual Violence, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2019-08-09 17:46:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 37,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16454510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyFrost/pseuds/TheLadyFrost
Summary: A rookie in a necropolis without hope. A boy with no choice. 100 days to make a machine. 100 days to birth a legend. The story of a boy who'd sell his soul - and become a hero. (Leon-centric. Operation Javier included. Freeform. Subjective canon adjacent with AU additions.) Rated M for language, violence, suggestive content, and potential lemon.





	1. Chapter 1

BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM

Episode 1: The Rookie  
...

Day 62:

The door opened. The squeal of rusty hinges filled the silence.

He rolled, eyes dilating to adjust to the gush of light into the absence of it.

A tray was pushed along the floor, scraping on the jagged stone.

"What is your answer?"

Shaking, soaked, freezing and naked – he stared back from the floor where he lay. "…no."

The door closed with a snap.

The tray in the dark had food. But the food was rotten. He knew that. The food was always rotten.

He inched toward it – and ate it anyway.  
...

Day 34:

"Come on! What the hell is this? Somebody get in here and talk to me!"

The slat on the door opened. Two blue eyes stared in at him. "Stop shouting."

"Then get in here and answer me."

"…agree. And he'll come in there."

"Agree to what!? What am I agreeing to?"

The eyes went right and left, searching for something he couldn't see. "To the Cage."

"What the fuck is the Cage?" He did air quotes. He laughed.

The eyes weren't laughing back at him. "The Cage is where you become. It's where you go to train. You want to live in that fucking room?"

"No. Let me out."

"Then agree to the cage."

The slat snapped shut and left him in the dark.  
....

Day 42:

He could hear the screaming. Someone, somewhere, was screaming like they were being tortured.

It was the first time he stopped being angry to really pay attention. Where was he? What was happening here?

What had he agreed to?

The door opened.

He made his first real mistake.

He rushed the door.

The tazer hit him full in the chest and threw him to his back on the cold stone. He jerked. He flopped. He gasped and spastically kicked his mattress. His jaw clenched on his tongue and drew blood.

Electricity stole his ability to do anything but lay there jerking like a landed fish.

Something was thrown on him. It was wet. It was warm. It smelled like pennies and sweat.

The door slammed shut.

He sat up in the dark, twitching from the after shocks.

His hands picked up the warm wet thing on him. It had a tattoo of an eagle on the back right shoulder.

It was the flesh off the back of Jefferson Drew. They'd skinned him alive.

It splatted. It plopped. It squelched as he dropped it.

He crawled to the corner and threw up the empty bile in his stomach.  
.....

Day 3:

The door opened. Curious, he rose from the mattress.

But the small foot kicked him in the chest and sent him back down.

Angrily, he almost shouted at her, "Let me the fuck out of here. Seriously."

The light from the door showed a pretty girl, small of build, probably mid-twenties. She shoved him to his back and mounted him. He was too surprised to do anything to stop her.

She tugged at his pants. She pulled him free and put him in her mouth.

His hand shot forward to spear through her hair. He tried to tug her free but she just sucked him harder.

The door opened. A man in white stood in the doorway. "There is pleasure in pain. And intense pain in release. Deny your body, deny your release, and learn to listen to your skills."

The girl was wetly sucking him, like a whore, like an eager thing.

He tried to tug her off again and she bit hard enough to arouse and frighten him in one go.

The man in the doorway added, "Give over. Please yourself. And prepare yourself for battle. Or deny your body, and succumb to the torture of your enemies."

He gasped, fisting his hands in the hair of the girl in his lap. She suckled him like a succubus, trying to pull his soul out of his dick.

Was the girl in his lap his enemy or his ally?

Who the hell knew here?

She bit again, swallowing him all the way to the base of him.

And he bucked, gasped, and went in her mouth – jerking.

The man in white nodded, "When you can resist your own release, when you can resist the needs of your body – you will be ready for what I can teach you. Until then?"

The girl rose. She shoved away from him and went out the door, no looking back.

"Remain in the dark and contemplate your own weakness."  
....

Day 17:

The door opened.

A bucket of water was thrown on him.

Freezing, stumbling, he collapsed against the wall with the force of it.

They sprayed soap all over him and threw another bucket.

He sat in the dark when the door slammed, soaked and freezing.  
.....

Day 26:

She came again, the girl with the short hair and the big eyes. She shot him first with the taser.

It sent him over, shaking and twitching.

She mounted him and jerked at his pants.

He started to pull her off him and she hit him again with the electricity. He flopped, jerking, gasping. And she sucked at his body.

Each time he reached for her, she hit him again.

After fifteen minutes, he went in her mouth, bucking and shaking. His body twitched, spastically, as she rose and kicked him away.

He laid in the dark still jerking from the countless shocks to his system.

He was starting to wonder who the hell he was anymore.  
.....

Day 30:

The music started.

Moonlight Sonata.

Over and over and over.

It played and played. It played and played and played. Loud. Constant.

He couldn't sleep. He couldn't do anything but hear it.

He put his face in his hands and jerked at his hair.  
.....

Day 48:

The torture.

They shocked him. They brought the water tank.

They did electro shock therapy. They strung him up and whipped him. First it was skinny little strips of leather. Repeteadly, over his back and buttocks.

He fought. Who wouldn't?

He fought.

By day 48, he stopped fighting.

They put him in the tub of water. They cranked up the electricity.

He ground his teeth and took it.

They strung him up to whip him. He stared at the wall and tuned them out.

In his head, over and over, Moonlight Sonata.

It had somehow become his happy place.  
......

Day 16:

The training started. Heavy.

Constant.

In a dark cellar, in wavering torchlight.

They shoved him barefoot onto heated coals.

He was given a Bo staff. He was pitted against a girl in a white gi. She hit him twice in the stomach, whipped around to take his knees, and kicked him to his back on the hot coals.

She whipped him in the face and spun away to trip him again as he raced at her.

She back flipped, spun around, and hit him twice in the nuts.

He went back into the dark burned and broken.  
.....

Day 50:

She came again.

He was naked now.

They didn't even bother to give him clothing.

He was bearded and likely looked like a monster. He was lean and honed and hard. They made sure of that too. They trained him.

She pushed him to his back. She put her mouth on him.

He didn't fight her.

He didn't even bother.

He stared at the wall above her head and felt nothing. She couldn't even get him erect now.

She sucked, she played, she rose to watch his face.

He ignored her.

She tilted her head. She took off her pants and climbed on his lap.

Moonlight Sonata played behind his eyes. He could see the chords. The notes. The lull and pull of the music.

She worked at him, trying to get him erect to mount him and fuck him.

Nothing.

She finally grabbed his bearded face and studied his empty eyes.

And nodded.

She climbed off his lap and left.

She didn't come back again.  
......

Day 54:

She came at him with the Bo staff. He waited, watching her.

She swung at him. He flipped back twice, spun low to miss losing his head, and took her feet. She went over into the coals and he kicked her in the side as she tried to rise. She rolled across the burning surface, scissored her legs to attempt to get back up and he hit her so hard in the face with the staff she was thrown backward.

She humped her hips, jerked her staff to take him in the junk, and he caught it, twisted, and whipped her twice in the face with her own staff.

As she went down, he hooked his knee behind her head, spun her out and hip kicked her twice in the ass.

On her face, she tried to crawl.

He put the staff to the back of her head and a voice shouted, "Enough!"

It wasn't. He drove the staff through the back of her neck.

It cracked. It spilled hot blood onto the burning coals. His feet were numb to it now. He no longer felt it.

Or pity for the cry she made as she died.

Moonlight Sonata played behind his eyes all the time now. It was all he heard.

Above him, that voice, "You have killed your trainer."

He dropped the staff.

The greasy spill of his hair nearly hid what had once been a handsome face.

And the voice said, "Good. You are ready…." To someone beside him, the voice said, "Put him in the cage."  
.....

Day 73:

The Cage hung above a pit of spikes. It was a wood arena no wider than a wrestling mat.

It was covered in old dried blood.

It had the skin of those who'd lost and died strung up like patchwork hide on a teepee around its narrow bars. Human flesh still browned, it seemed, in the sun even after it was cleaved from the muscle and bone of its owner.

They were given knives.

They were put in The Cage.

The man in white said, "End your opponent. Or you will both die."

The Cage was lowered above the pit of spikes. The spikes were enormous, fashioned from heavy trunks of heavily sharpened trees. They wound puncture the fragile cage and killed them both if the bond that dangled it was cut. It was, literally, kill or be killed.

He faced the girl across from him.

Pretty.

Young.

He kept forgetting that he was young too.

He felt a million years old.

The girl was scared. He could smell it on her. Like a predator. Like an animal.

She whispered, "Why are we here?"

He had no answer.

He beckoned her with one hand. The knife pointed at the ground. His legs braced. He took up the stance they'd hammered at him until it was burned in his skull.

Shaking, the girl echoed him.

She whispered, "We could escape. Together? We could escape."

One of the bonds of the cage was cut. It swung, fast and sharp and scary. It swung over the pit, listing to one side. She shrieked and staggered.

He didn't.

He held his feet.

He didn't even move.

The voice called to them, "Now. Or die screaming."

She raced him. He braced. He rolled his back and her knife swung over the air where he'd been. His elbow rolled and smacked into her face, throwing her sideways. His foot kicked her knee to send her rolling. She managed to be a second ahead of the stomp he sent at her face.

She staggered and clamored up. She spun back at him, jabbing madly with her knife.

He paried, he blocked, he kicked her in the groin and threw himself back into cartwheel to kick her in the face as he went.

She squeaked. She hit the edge of The Cage and touched the flesh there.

She shrieked and dropped her knife.

She covered her face, crying. "Oh god…oh god…what is this place?"

The voice called, "Pick up your knife, St. Louis."

The girl cried softly now, desperately, "….I can't."

The voice sighed dramatically, "… Raccoon City."

He heard the command in the voice. He turned. And he threw the knife at her.

The girl, named for town she'd once lived in, tried to block it. But it sank into her throat. She gagged. She staggered. She fought against it, stumbling, and sliding in her blood. She went down, she crawled, she sobbed – she died in the rich smell of copper.

They raised The Cage.

They put him back in his room.

Moonlight Sonata in his ears, in his head, in his eyes. His programming was complete. He was nothing now but a killer. He didn't know who he was anymore but their puppet.

The door closed.

He put his face in his hands and wept.  
......

Day 1:

"Leon!"

She struggled against their hands.

He stood in the circle of the men in the suits and watched her go. He spit blood on the ground. They'd already tried to get him to tell them where Claire had fled to.

He didn't tell them a damn thing.

So, they decided to use the girl to get to him instead.

"Agree, Mr. Kennedy, or we'll experiment on her until she's nothing more than blood and development."

The little girl. The longest night of his life.

And the hopelessness of defeat.

He spoke, softly, "You're supposed to be the good guys."

The man in the glasses smiled softly, "Mr. Kennedy, there are no good guys. There's just us versus them. We saw your transcripts. We read your file. We need you. If you're not with us, you're against us. Agree, we'll make you a legend in our field."

Leon said nothing.

"Deny us, and we'll make you a memory like the city you left behind."

Sherry shouted, they stuffed her in a black sedan.

"I want her protected. I swear to god, if I find you you've let anything happen to her, I'll take the skills you teach me and use every last one of them to destroy you."

They held eyes in the badly lit hallway.

"Agreed. Take him to White."

Sherry slapped her hand to the window of the Sedan, like she could touch him.

He lifted his hand like they'd hold on, just one last time.

And they stuck the needle in the side of his neck.  
.....

Day 100:

He went into the forest Leon Kennedy.

Maybe.

He went up against ten other people. Like Battle Royale. Like a man with nothing to lose. A game. A hunt. A predator and ten prey.

The first died in the brush trying to run.

The second struggled beneath the water while he'd held them down.

The third was an easy snipe from the top of the tree where he was perched like an avenging angel.

He took two of them down together by setting the little hut on fire where he found them sleeping. Apparently, they were lovers. They were just trying to out live the others and escape.

He killed two more while they fled across the lake. He swam down the first one and broke their neck while they struggled in the water. The second made it to the shore and he hit them in the back with a rock, kicked them to their back on the sand, and stomped their face to nothing.

The eighth one died after a lengthy struggle in the swamp. They both spilled blood. They both hit hard. Leon limped away. But he put the other man in the swamp choking on his own collapsed wind pipe.

The ninth one was luck.

They ran around the edge of the building where Leon was leaning. They stared at each other.

A pretty girl with big green eyes.

He head butted her. She went down. And he snapped her neck while she tried to run.

Eight days.

Eight days.

And one final opponent.

A shiver of sound had him missing losing his head to the arrow. He paced, he hid, he waited. Eventually the archer emerged from the trees. Leon kicked a tree branch into his hands and swung.

In the dark, a bat to the face.

A final gurgle.

And the last man left alive.

He collapsed to his knees.

They came to extract him.

100 days to make him a monster.

100 days to see him slaughter like a beast.

He went into the forest Leon Kennedy.

He came out The Executioner.


	2. Chapter 2

BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM  
....

Episode 2: The Soldier  
...

Day 2:

The long curl of smoke flickered in the moist air.

The bus was broken down on the side of the red dirt road.

The grass around them was burnt, brown, and struggling to survive the drought. For high summer, the heat was surprisingly tolerable. You still felt like a wet buffalo was sitting on your chest, but at least you weren't on your own damp lungs when you took a breath.

The humidity was cloying but it wasn't killing.

Sitting on the side of the road, the two men shared a bottle of water between them.

They watched the angry little man with the pot belly work under the hood of the smoking bus. It was an open air model, missing the sides and leaving them all exposed anyway like a San Francisco trolley. But the engine had shit the bed shortly after they'd reached the end of civilization.

There were a handful of them there on the bus.

No one seemed inclined to make friends.

Leon found himself getting the proverbial stink eye from other people on the bus.

He studied them, with a cop's eye.

A couple girls in tank tops and shorts. A couple guys in jeans and tees. Everyone looked…what? Scared?

Not exactly.

But not exactly thrilled to be there either.

Maybe they were all like him, blackmailed into being there in the first place.

On the ground next to him was the only person who'd spoke to him, Jack Krauser. Krauser was enormous. He was Bane in Batman big. He was all muscle and good patrician features; handsome with a shock of blonde hair.

He wore a red tank top on his massive chest and camouflage fatigues on his muscled legs.

Leon felt scrawny and small in his green Oscar the Grouch t-shirt and his jeans.

Krauser was friendly enough. He talked about being in USSOCOM. He talked about coming here for the versatility of the training. His chain of command was grooming him to lead a spearhead of special operations. To do that, he needed to be able to withstand torture, to excel in various styles of combat, and be able to prove himself.

He offered the bottle and Leon took it, sipping, "Honestly, they're talking about send me up against B.O.W.S. when this is over. But I'm not sure I believe they exist."

Leon shifted in the red dirt. "They exist. I promise you that."

Curious, Krauser studied his face. "You see 'em?"

"Oh, yeah. Plenty of them. I survived Raccoon City."

Surprised, impressed, and smiling, Krauser mused, "Must be a helluva story."

"Yeah." Leon studied the driver's angry waving hands, "A long one."

Krauser kicked his legs out, sighing, "We might be here awhile. You wanna talk about it?"

Leon hadn't had a friend in so long, he thought, why not?

And he started talking to the soldier on the side of the road.

Day 18:

The pit was a massive circle.

It was all burning coals.

Krauser stepped on it without a car. His calloused feet liked it, like a warm massage. He kicked coals playfully.

And his opponent stepped out.

Thin but built. She wore a tight little white tank and tiny shorts. Her dark hair was bound up in a high ponytail.

He laughed, watching her.

"Hi there, sweetheart. Why don't you drop that stick and I'll give you a bigger one to play with?"

She twirled her bo staff. He twirled his.

She swung at him. He ducked back and kicked her in the stomach. She staggered but didn't go down.

Amused, they paced each other in the burning coals.

The heat of it sent swirling, shimmering plumes of humidity into the sky. It was like looking through a wavering filter. The world actually roasted as they fought.

She was quick. She was good. She was a second faster, a second smoother, a second sharper. She hit him twice in both arms, ducked and swept his feet, and jabbed him in the belly. He caught her staff, jerked her forward, and elbowed her in the face.

She spit blood, spun a reverse roundhouse kick, and kicked him away.

He laughed, dropping his staff.

She tilted her head like a dog, laughed herself, and stuck her staff in the coals. She used it like a pole vaulter, went up, and double kicked him in the chest. Krauser caught her ankle as he went down, jerked, and spilled her down atop him.

She heard his back sizzle from the heat.

But he got two handfuls of her ass anyway and rubbed her on him.

Disgusted, she bit his nose as he tugged her down to kiss her.

Krauser howled, like a wounded animal, and kneed her right in the crotch.

It hurt, she rolled away and leaped to her feet, and he hit her as she spun back toward him.

A hook.

A hard one.

It hit her in the face and sent her spinning.

She went down to her hands and knees throwing blood from her mouth.

Krauser kicked her in the belly to her back and she threw her leg out as she went. It was a hard, impressive hit to the groin. He grunted and grabbed her throat, lifting her up to dangle. He grabbed a handful of her breast and she rolled.

She kicked her legs up, she looped them around his face and rolled, and she whipped him away to throw him out like he wasn't twenty hundred and thirty pounds of muscle.

Krauser landed on his back on the coals and she was above him, the bo staff at his right eye.

The voice called, "Enough!"

And the battle was awarded to the big tittied girl.

Gnashing his teeth, Krauser was sent back to his kennel to pace and curse.

From the top of the rise, the other's watched, as they always did during the battle.

Leon swirled the matchstick in his mouth, curious about the girl. She paused as she left the arena. She glanced up.

He smiled and bowed his head in a salute to her victory. She smiled, laughed lightly, and left the ring.

Day 24:

Jefferson Drew was an accomplished acrobat.

He was so fast.

He was like a mosquito. He taught Leon all about flip kicks and spin kicks and hurricanes. They practiced back flips and back handsprings and tucks.

He said, "You're like me. You can't be huge. You have to be fast."

He gestured to Jack. "That? He's big. He'll use big like a weapon his whole life. He'll punch everything that gets in his way. Life, enemies, boulders. If he can fight it, he'll do it. You?"

Jefferson Drew shifted, scooping back his braided hair into a ponytail. "You need to move like a survivor. Float like a butterfly…"

Leon considered him as the circled each other, "…sting like a bee."

"Exactly."

They worked on boxing. They worked on tumbling. Leon flipped so many times and fell so many times his knees were all torn up.

The burns all over his back were legion.

Drew watched him, curious, "You lose in the pit a lot?"

"…yeah. Yeah I do."

Drew sighed, softly, "You need to get faster than those bitches. They're not strong, Kennedy. They're fast. Watch."

He flurried. He came at Leon in a steady stream of shifting movement and speed. Leon swung, typical boy fighting, and hit nothing. While he recovered, Drew pummeled him twice in the side, swung low and foot swept him, and elbowed him in the solar plexus.

Leon stumbled and Drew dropped down and threw a high kick into his face.

It sent him onto his back, gasping.

Drew put his hand down, smiling. "How about we make that our goal?"

"Deal."

Day 28:

Jefferson Drew wasn't alone in the pit.

He was with the girl who'd beaten Jack.

She was so quick. Like a lightning strike.

She was swift and merciless. She drove him back on the hot coals. She was equal to him. She flipped, she rolled, she shifted and dodged.

She turned.

And Jack was in the pit with her.

Head tilted, she heard The Voice call, "When one is unparalleled. One becomes the hunted. No longer the hunter, how will you fair as the prey?"

She took them both on.

Drew came at her like a flashing storm. He flipped. He rolled; he swung the staff and clipped her face. She was thrown off and Jack grabbed her to lift her and throw her like garbage.

She tucked in the air and landed, rolling into a cartwheel.

Drew swung at her and she rolled her shoulders, flipped sideways, and hooked her knee around his staff. She jerked, threw him to his face, and rolled the staff into her hands. She hit him in the back with it to knock him to his face and spun sleek and low under Krauser's heavy handed punching.

More ninja than anything Leon had ever seen, she was brutally swift. She hit Krauser in the belly, aimed at his groin and jabbed him twice, and knocked the staff between his knees to throw him down. He hit and she slapped him twice in the face with the end of it.

Drew triple kicked her in the back, sending her flailing, jerked the staff from her hands and whipped it at her face.

She threw up her arms and heard the twack of bamboo striking.

But not her.

She wasn't alone anymore.

And The Voice spoke again, "When one rises triumphant, it encourages allies. Beware the difference between friend and foe. For one is often the same in the thick of battle."

Leon caught the staff, jerked it as he rolled toward Drew, and whipped it from the other man's hands. Drew reeled, Leon used the staff to foot sweep him, and he kicked as Drew went down, sending him skidding over the ground on his back.

The girl met Leon's eyes, smirking. "A hero huh?"

"Nah." He rolled the staff as Jack rose, "I just love a good underdog story."

She laughed and whistled. He dropped, she leap frogged over his back, and he swept the staff from the crouch he was in, taking Jack's feet again as he rushed them.

The girl landed around Drew like a monkey, whipped her body like some kind of contortionist, and went right between his legs to sit on the ground. She jerked. He went down. And she head butted him in the groin as he did.

Leon winced. Drew shouted and curled on himself.

And Jack grabbed the staff from the ground.

Leon mused, laughing, "Krauser, you sure like to put your hands on my staff, man."

Krauser snorted and jerked, "Your staff is as skinny and pathetic as you are, Kennedy. Let's see if I can fuck you up with it."

He kicked, the blow hit Leon in the thigh, and Leon struggled to keep the staff amid the massive strength of the other man. The blow threw him left, Krauser pummeled him in the side and in the kidney like a tank, and Leon hunched around the pain.

He also lost the staff.

Krauser hit him twice in the back with it and the girl was there.

She whistled, Krauser turned, and she kicked him square in the nuts.

He reeled and she punched him in the face, jerked the staff from him, and whipped him in the face again. He went staggering, Leon tackled him from the hunch he was in, and he took them both to the ground. A good punch to the face and Krauser was roaring his rage.

The Voice called, "ENOUGH!"

Just like that, they all stopped fighting.

Leon got to his feet and offered Jack a hand up.

Angry but impressed, Krauser took it.

Drew came over to slap him on the back. "Kennedy…getting better."

The girl tilted her head, "Like JFK?"

Leon grinned at her. A bead of sweat slid down her forehead. Her eyes were super blue in her sweaty face. "Something like that. Who are you?"

She laughed and left the pit.

Day 30:

Krauser finished his battle. A brutal battle. A victory earned in blood.

His trainer crawled over the pit, bleeding from her mouth and her broken wrist pinned to her chest.

In the stands, cheering.

The other's all stomping and shouting and whooping.

The Voice called, "A victor retains his spoils. Show your power."

When you won your battle against your trainer, you were allowed to finish them. Most knocked them unconscious. Occasionally, one offered mercy and helped them rise.

Leon Kennedy would be the first to kill his in mortal combat on the day he defeated her.

Krauser chose a path as yet unseen.

He jerked her to the edge of the pit and threw her on her face on the table where the staffs lay.

The crowd began to quiet.

And The Voice spoke again, "The powerful take what they earn."

Beside Leon, Drew whispered, "….jesus Christ."

And they watched Jack Krauser jerk down the tiny shorts of his trainer and plow her tiny body while she screamed.

She didn't fight him.

She lay on the table and took it.

Leon glanced over the ring to where the girl with the blue eyes was sitting.

The rage on her face was a palpable thing. She glanced up. They locked eyes.

They were likely the only two people not watching the horror of the rutting that happened in the pit. But the trainer's screams echoed in the boiling air.

The Voice condoned power.

Sexual power, after all, was power. And Jack had won.

Leon rose from his seat. He turned away and left the pit.

He went back into his darkened room shaking. Disgust gnawed at his guts. What kind of training was this? What was the lesson here?

That the strong took their power from the weak?

Rape was power here. Pain was power. Torture was power.

He was starting to wonder who the hell he was anymore.

And then the music started playing.

It didn't stop.

Day 40:

"We need to escape."

Leon stood in the pit, facing Jefferson Drew.

They were circling each other.

Drew was whispering, "We need to escape, Kennedy. Tell me I'm wrong."

Leon shook his head. He was trembling though.

And Drew added, "How often do they torture you?"

Leon could hear the music in his head. It never stopped, the music, these days the music never stopped.

"….nightly."

"Yeah. Me too. Water torture?"

"Yes."

"…the depravation chamber?"

God.

GOD.

The dark coffin. Short on air, soundless, sightless, lost. Nothing but your own tortured breaths. There was almost, almost, almost nothing worse.

Leon whispered, "….yes."

Drew spun at him. They pantomimed fighting to please the crowd. And Drew whispered back, "They rape you?"

Leon froze and took a hit to the face for it.

It sent him to his back.

Drew jerked him to his feet. "Yeah," The answer was all over the other man, "Me too. Should be awesome right? Hot chics sucking your dick. Kicking asses. No job, no bills, no boss. Just fighting and fucking. Awesome right?"

They stared at each other.

And Drew said again, "Yeah. Wait for it. Wait. They'll take you to see the Judas Cradle."

Judas Cradle. A pyramid shaped seat where they bound you and lowered you. If you refused to fight, you were flogged and tortured, and killed. They knew it.

They all knew it.

Judas Cradle – where you were forced upon the seat while the pyramid end went into your ass. It split you open, one painful inch at a time. If you didn't die from the sheer horror of it, you died from the infection afterward.

It was never cleaned between participants.

You signed a paper that said you agreed to the training.

You agreed to participate in everything. You signed away your life and agreed.

You agreed to your own death, your own mutilation, your own stripped humanity.

Drew stopped fighting him. The crowd roared around them, and he whispered, "They're putting me in The Cage tonight."

Leon stopped breathing.

"Yeah. I have to escape. I have to. Or I'm dead."

Day 44:

Drew was dead.

The smell of his bloody flesh still lingered.

The training was keeping him alive when he wanted to curl up and die.

Drew was dead.

His only real friend in the whole compound.

They taught Leon Boli Khela. They taught him bare knuckle boxing. They taught him akido and sambo, fencing, and jujitsu. They taught him eskrima and defendu, they taught him to use a knife like an extension of his hand. He was fast, capable, deadly and determined.

He killed his first opponent in the pit.

He watched the light bleed out of his eyes. They'd shared a sandwich hours before. A nice kid, barely twenty years old. Bolivian or something and there because he was the best in his unit of whatever secret entity he served.

They never talked about their organizations. No one knew that much. No one knew more than names.

Leon stumbled into the dark of his chamber and threw up.

The music turned on and grounded him, somehow.

Day 50:

They pulled him from the tank.

They threw him on the floor and hit him with the shock rods. Once, twice, three times – they strung him up to flog him with straps.

And they demanded answers.

Who was he?

Where was he from?

What was his purpose?

He said nothing.

All he could hear now was the music.

The girl on her knees sucking on him. The shock rods in his spine. Torture. Torture and pain and death. That's what this was. It was preparation for all of it.

He stared at the wall.

The girl raised up to eye him.

He kicked her in the face where he dangled.

The Voice was loud in his ears, "Yes. Deny your body. Refute your needs. Overcome. And face your enemies without equal. Put him in the pit."

He went into the pit.

And he was face to face with the girl with the blue eyes.

They fought. They bled. She was merciless. But she wasn't better.

She hit him and hit him and took each one he threw at her. They locked elbows, shins, arms. They tossed and rolled and kicked.

They stood bloody and tired in the center of the ring.

And The Voice called, "Good. Sometimes, your opponent is without equal. Sometimes, your opponent is your equal in all things. Retire, repurpose, and discover your path to victory."

All the women that had put their hands and their mouths on him and she was the first one that triggered a feeling in his gut.

It was the only way he knew he was still himself under the monster they'd created.

Day 89:

They put Krauser in The Cage.

He faced two at once.

A man and a woman.

They weren't good enough.

The Cage rattled. It rocked. It was epic.

Krauser finished the man quickly. Breaking his arms and his knees and leaving him breathing and screaming on the ground to suffer.

The girl was fast. She was good. She was small and blonde and quick.

She took her shot. She took him down once and got him twice in the stomach with her knife.

He punched her so hard in the face it threw her away to roll on the ground.

She crawled and he pinned her to the ground on her belly with his boot in her back.

The broken man made a small mewling noise. Krauser rolled the arm of the girl up over her back. He took her own hand and jabbed her in the back three times with her knife.

She screamed.

He broke her arm, he rolled her over, and he stabbed her eighteen times in the belly with that little knife. She grunted, she gasped, and she bled everywhere.

He mused, laughing, "I'd fuck ya honey, but I think we both know you're fucked already."

Her mouth moved like a landed fish. He put his fingers into her bleeding wounds and wiggled them like a kid with Playdough. He licked her tears like a dog and kept on stabbing her.

She died screaming.

And Krauser was rewarded by being given his own trip into the forest for his final fight.

He was there slaughtering the other people for 11 days.

100 days to train him.

100 days to turn a good soldier into a monster.

100 days to erode a soul and leave a husk behind.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +Author's note+:
> 
> From this point on, I'll flash back when necessary to those 100 days to further show "White" as a character. To explain this story - it's really the basis of how I see Leon Kennedy. He's displayed so broadly, so crookedly, so strangely across the canon that I just try to disconstruct him in a way that makes sense. He starts out in 2 as a sweet kid who's eager and driven. He's funny and sarcastic and quick in 4. He's darker somehow in Darkside Chronocles beside Krauser than alone in Spain in 4. He's so cold it's weird in Degeneration (why? I'll get to that too.) He bounces back to that quick wit and sarcasm and snarky guy in Damnation (on the edge though. Teetering.) He's darker in 6 than we've ever seen him. And nearly lost in Vendetta. Why? I love him. So I want to find out why. Why not? This story is entirely written for me - just because it's been in my head in one piece or another for 20 years.
> 
> If you've read Obsession, you've read this chapter. I lost interest in that story. I simply put it down, hated what it had become, and scrapped it. Here I'm doing what I wanted from the beginning there - I'm fleshing out Leon Kennedy. I LIKED what I started there. I lost it, under a fanfare of catering to readers and wanting everyone to love me, and that was my mistake.
> 
> This version will expand on him from before Javier to after Harvardville. We'll see how far I get. But the beginning is really about the boy who became a legend. It's going to touch all the bases here -Claire, Ada, Jill. Because that's the way it boils out. Hopefully, it comes together how I want this time.

BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM  
.....

Episode 3: The First Kill  
.....  
Eventually - a machine is oiled. It's prepared.

And it's put out into the world to fulfill it's purpose.

His?

To kill.

In the beginning, they'd trained him to lead men. It had gone alright. It had confused his superiors that he wasn't a better leader. His test scores were off the charts. His personality was friendly and unassuming. He was witty, wise, and possessed of an enviable ability to see danger where others were blind. But the tone of command didn't suit him. Not in that way. He wasn't built to run parallel with a mission parameter, with a boss, with a series of grunts to do his bidding.

That was Chris Redfield's bag of tricks. His? Speed. Silence. And solitude.

Redfield's dedication to the cause came with the betrayal that had born a hero. Leon's came from blackmail. It came from manipulation. And it came from the power that poured into him to break free of the chains that had bound him to his own regret.

They shared one singular purpose in all of it: They were both going to scrub the T-Virus from the face of the Earth. And the cost? It would never been too high.

He'd been paying it since that first moment he'd gone out alone to serve them. His blackmailers. His puppet masters. They'd cracked his leash and sent him to do their bidding.

And, picturing Sherry Birkin's crying face, he'd done it. He'd almost botched it…but he'd done it. He'd gone into that camp a puppet.

And he'd emerged from it a legend.

Udom, Russia – Volya Sanctuary Camp -2000

They sent him on a mission alone in Russia. The target had been a woman. A woman. The face of the resistance against putting troops on the ground to occupy an outpost offering sanctuary to terrorists there. She'd been a bleeding heart, yes, but she'd been neutral. She offered quarter to any man that needed it. The rules there were simple: no fighting in sanctuary.

His mission had been to infiltrate her sanctuary and eliminate her. Once the sanctuary was US occupied, they could begin the hunt to find the splinters in Russia that remained of Umbrella. That was always the goal: eliminate Umbrella.

Her name was Catia Gachev. She was the widow of a disgraced former Umbrella Corps operative that had gone to the good guys and turned spy against his own men. His exposure and ultimate death at the hands of his own men had turned her away from the fight. She spent her time now offering sanctuary to those affected by the war on bioterror. Adjacent to the constantly war torn Eastern Slav Republic, Volya Sanctuary Camp was a haven for those that needed a hot meal, a warm bed, and no fear of a bullet or a claw to the brain.

He didn't have to show I.D. He didn't have to do anything but give up his weapons to step into the camp. He came without any to start with so it was no cost to him to let them pat him down and clear him for entry.

The camp was set up in what had formerly been a steel workers townqu. The buildings had survived the first rush of a bioterror attack and, once the threat of the T-Virus had been eradicated, the survivors had taken up refuge amongst buildings in decent repair. White washed walls and the affects of Stalinsim could be felt in the square concept of the designs and the bay windows. Simplicity and strength was the signature of pre-war architecture in modest, but grim, use of stone and stark exposure. As part of the Soviet policy of rationalization of the country, all cities were built to a general development plan. Each was divided into districts, with allotments based on the city's general geographical structure. Projects, such as internment camps or refugee centers, visibility transformed the architectural image of the city.

The color was legion here. It seeped from the stones and the walls and dreary gray sky. The Russian winter had been hard on the camp. He could see it echoed in the faces of the hungry and the huddled. They congregated around trashcan fires and bonfires. They huddled together in groups sharing bread and conversation. There wasn't room here for fine things and jealousy.

Those who had, shared, those who didn't have, asked. It was always humbling to stand in the presence of the truly poor and reflect upon how hard life could be. He'd brought nothing of value with him. He wore nothing of value. He was simply dressed in a long gray wool coat and a sock hat. A scarf protected his face and neck from the chill and heavy gloves left his hands insulated. The tips were bare to allow him to pull the trigger if needs be.

Of course, Leon had no gun. So, killing wasn't an option…well, killing was ALWAYS an option. But not from a distance. Not this time.

He eased his way to the supply room where bodies milled and people shifted. They carried boxes of dry goods and coats. They counted donations. They spoke about necessity and rations. Children played in the corner of the large room with small dirty dolls. They were clean, the children, but their clothes were ragged and worn.

The smallest girl in the group sat alone, swinging her little legs on the box where she perched. She was blonde and blue eyed. There was a smear of dirt on her nose. The raggedy red coat she wore had holes that someone had tried to patch. Her little ears were pink from cold. Her baby doll was little more than stitched fabric with a yarn smile. She glanced up and smiled at him. She dimples in her cheeks.

And her big blue eyes reminded him a little dirty girl on a train.

Leon paused and lifted his mouth in a smile. She giggled and showed him her doll.

He knelt and took it. His Russian was flawless as they spoke, softly. A sweet, guileless child, she shared her laughter with him and took away, just a little, the edge of cold that was trying to permeate his heart. He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out his spare hat.

It was soft and dark and snuggled over her ears to protect them. She giggled—and threw her arms around him to hug him. She cried, "Spasibo!"

And Leon, frozen, relented and hugged her back. He said, softly, "Pozhaluysta."

He rose and the girl ran to join the rest of the children and show them her hat. She gestured to him and laughed and waved. He lifted one corner of his mouth in a wry smile and winked.

Beside him, a voice said, in heavily accented English, "Stenka Razin was a champion of the poor. He was, in a way, the Russian Robin Hood. His legacy told of giving when there was nothing to give. He often was known to give his only shirt to those whom suffered."

Leon turned to see who had spoken. She was small and had dark hair stuffed lazily into a fur cap. Her dark eyes were watching him. Her face was lean and haughty. It was arresting not because it was beautiful, as it lacked some line of eye or curve of lip to be beautiful, but because the intelligence on it worked with those big eyes to tell you this woman was in charge.

He knew she was in charge.

He had her picture in his back pocket.

She was strong cheekboned and had heavy dark brows that arched over those eyes. The eyes were the kicker. Anime girl big with lots of long eyelashes. The color was whiskey gold and watching him like she was trying to pick apart his bones and see what his soul held.

Her bio said she was twenty eight and had training as a doctor before she'd given it up to play philanthropist and peacemaker. It said she'd lost a child to the virus before it had been beaten back and the city reclaimed from the dead. This woman had given everything she had to the fight. The husband, the child, the safety of her former life…she was trying to bridge the distance from destruction to reconstruction. She was offering peace when there was war.

She was a good woman.

And his job was to eliminate her.

Catia said, "That little girl will never forget the handsome stranger who gave her a hat when she was cold. A modern day Stenka Razin…and American no less."

Leon lifted a brow at her.

She grinned a little. "Yes. I heard you speak. You accent is almost flawless. But you speak it so pristinely. You're American. I'd bet my life on it."

And Leon finally said, "I am. And you give me too much credit. I don't deserve a Robin Hood title for giving a cold girl a hat. That's not kindness."

"Don't you?" Catia considered him, "Many here have nothing to give. Yet you give what you have. Is that not kindness in America?"

He considered her. She considered him.

And she said, "I am Catia. This is my camp. You came here to hide, yes?"

"Do you really expect an answer?"

And now she laughed. And when she laughed, she was lovely. She said, "I don't. I won't ask again. Come with me, Robin Hood. Let us see if we can get you some food and a place to sleep."

He followed her and felt a little tremble in his stomach from it. Objectively, he didn't want to kill her. Killing her was like killing the monkey in the middle. It just didn't make sense. Surely there was another way to occupy this town. What was here that the government wanted badly enough to murder a neutral force?

And he wondered what the husband had known. And if he'd told the wife. If Catia was privy to information that could inhibit the hunt for Umbrella here, it made sense to eliminate her. Capturing her wouldn't happen with so many guards and in the bosom of her own creation. So, she'd been targeted for assassination.

He was chosen because he fit the profile. Young, unassuming, and equipped with knife skills that would allow him to kill her in close quarters and slip out unseen. That it was his virgin solo mission was of no concern. He'd been trained to finish the job.

He'd finish it.

They wanted him to undercover here for a week and find out what was known. He was to befriend and extract information from appropriate sources. He was to "employ any and all subversive and comprehensive interrogation techniques to elicit and retain required information".

In other words? He was allowed to do whatever it took to make people talk up to, and including, torturing them.

He could.

They'd trained him to torture people.

They'd trained him to resist torture as well.

He was a baby in the world of covert operations, true. But he was a baby trained by a monster. So he was already a leg up from a normal agent.

Catia led him into the main building to the side of the camp. It had started life as a hospital. The maintenance of it was outstanding. People milled around the nurses stations and poked into rooms to congregate and share.

Catia didn't stop on the ground floor. She took him to the freight elevator and hit the button to call it to them. She turned back to look at him again.

"Will you tell me your name, Robin Hood?"

Leon smirked a little and shifted his bag over his shoulder. "Leon."

"Leon." She rolled if off her tongue with a long L. Russian, like German, was guttural on a good day. It was easy to assault the language and butcher the intricacy of it. She didn't. She rolled it off the tongue with flourish. She spoke to him in Russian now as they crossed the roof of the big hospital toward the far side.

The helicopter that sat there was being worked on by two pretty girls in pointy hats. They eyed him with curious eyes as they moved. One of them giggled.

Catia paused at the small makeshift bridge that spanned to the next building and grinned. "It would appear your pretty face is popular here."

Leon shrugged a little and smirked. "Girls giggle. They've been giggling for years. Maybe I should fuck the face up and ruin the pretty."

Catia leapt off the far side of the walk way and watched him. He tilted his head and held her look.

She finally said, "I think not. Keep the pretty. It suits you."

Amused, he followed her into the stairwell of the next building. It was an apartment building. Or had been at one time. It was used as a headquarters now it seemed. There were people brainstorming and working on maps. There were people living as well. The apartments were full of refugees and families. She opened the door at the end of a long hallway and gestured.

He went through the door into a one bedroom apartment. The bed was a futon. There was a dresser and simple wood bookshelves with books. The kitchen was functional and simple. She said, "It's not the fancy American hotels you might have known in your time, I'm afraid."

Leon laughed a little, "It's perfect. Thank you. It was just a hat for a little girl. Surely there's a family that could use this apartment instead of me. I can sleep on the floor, Catia. I don't need anything else."

Catia watched him again, assessing him. "You are so humble, Leon. Why?"

Leon shrugged and set his bag down on the floor. "I don't need anything. Just a safe place. That's it."

"You have that here. There is only one very clear rule here: no violence. No fighting of any kind. Rape? Abuse? None of these are tolerated. Kindness is king here. Remember that."

She paused as she moved passed him. She glanced up at his face. "You seem to be already kind. That little girl will not forget your pretty face, Leon….and neither will I."

She left him in the apartment and closed the door.

In the days that followed, he'd made friends with some of the other refugees. They were all hard working people. They were all good people. They had stories about survival and infection and rejection. One woman was missing an arm that her husband had chopped off the moment she'd been bitten by a zombie. It had worked to stop the infection.

He filed away the knowledge for later use.

The little girl, Dasha, constantly followed him. She would tell him all about her day. He found her a matryoshka doll when scavenging for supplies outside the camp. It was a Russian nesting doll. It had replaced her dirty baby in her hands. Dasha was always showing him secrets around the camp. She showed him ways to get into the supply room and places where secret food was stashed. She showed him ways out of the walls without alerting guards.

With a simple act of kindness, he'd found the most useful fount of information he could have hoped for. No torture necessary. Just friendship.

Catia recruited him to help with supply runs and interior reconstruction. He did a lot of lifting and shifting and building. He helped with defense of the perimeter and relieved guards on the walls for breaks. She'd handed him power in the camp because he'd given a hat.

The simplicity of that amazed him. There was no jaded eyes here. No one looked at him like he might strike and sink his fangs into them to poison their lively hood. These were just people trying to survive. Why was he here trying to kill them?

The more days that passed the worse he began to second guess his mission. Killing Catia would serve no purpose. He watched her, he tracked her, he was constantly in her presence. She wasn't trying to over throw anything. She wasn't blocking efforts to stop the search for Umbrella. She was just trying to help people stay alive in a messy situation.

He watched her admit Umbrella mercenaries one day. He watched them move through the camp the same as the children. They weren't there to kill anyone. They were there to eat and sleep and move on. Maybe he didn't agree with helping the enemy but they weren't her enemy. They were just people working for the enemy. And she saw the good in them too.

He said to her, one night while they sat on the wall, "How can you help them? They killed your husband."

She met his eyes in the darkness. "Did they? Personally? No. They may well have followed the order to have him killed. Yes. But we all serve some kind of power, Leon. Not many of us has the ability to rise against that power and do what we want. We submit or we die. I won't punish them because they are trapped in servitude to an evil corporation. I won't judge you if you are as well. It's not my place. The purpose of this place is safety. That's all you will find here. If they choose to rise up and fight that which controls them? Then that is how they make amends for what they do. But inside these walls they are just people who need help. And I will offer help to any who need it."

He didn't want to kill her.

It rang in his head like a bell. He didn't want to kill her. She was doing good here. She was helping. She wasn't hurting anyone. But the government said she was in the way. It said she was offering sanctuary to the enemy. It needed her gone to occupy her town and track down the enemy.

It was his job to eliminate her.

What he wanted didn't matter?

He served a master, as they all did, that expected complete obedience. They expected him to submit and serve his purpose. His purpose was to kill for them. Hours, hours, and days spent in his own sweat, blood, and tears had guaranteed he knew how to follow orders.

But that was the thing about him. He'd never broken. He'd submitted but he'd never broken.

And it made him a wild card.

Leon shifted a box of supplies to the top of a pile of goods in the storage room. He rolled his neck and shoulders. He had been making information drops to his handler nightly at this time outside the gates. He gave them what little he could on the actions of the camp. He gave them nothing on Catia. There was nothing to tell them. She wasn't up to some great conspiracy. She was just a woman trying to live her life.

He turned to put the keys to the storage room in the office.

She was sitting at the desk there drafting a letter to someone.

Her dark hair was shaggy and kitchen shears short. It was pinned up around her arresting face. Her eyes lifted to him.

The silence of the empty room was very loud.

She said, softly, "You are working late."

"So are you."

And she answered, "There are rumors of an outbreak outside the walls. I'm trying to find out how bad it is. I don't have the resources to mount a rescue, not exactly…but if there are survivors…they will need a place to recover."

He studied her face in the low lamp from the desk. "You know that Umbrella has a base out there…somewhere close to here. You know that. Tell me I'm wrong."

"….not wrong, Leon. The Caucasus region has always been unstable. The conjunctive attempts with the ESR to over take the villages there is well documented. Eventually, they will succeed." She set her pen down and rubbed her eyes.

"And yet you offer sanctuary to their troops? Why?"

She lifted her eyes to his face again. "Why not? Orders are orders. We all follow them. We don't have to like them. But we follow them."

"And who's orders do you follow, Catia? Who's in charge of you?"

She rose from the desk and moved around it. He was leaning in the door frame watching her. She lifted a brow at him. "I created this place to get away from orders, Leon. I created this place to help when no one else would. I won't change the rules I established because the bad guys are winning. It defeats the purpose of sanctuary."

Exasperated, he took her arms and gave her a little shake, "Catia, the bad guys that are winning? They'll storm this place. They'll tear it down brick by brick. They don't care about sanctuary. They just want to destroy. Do you understand that? You can't straddle the line forever. You have to pick a side."

Catia lifted a sad smile. "I have chosen a side, Leon. Don't you see? Sometimes, the only side we can fight for is peace. For these children, for their families…I'll keep on offering peace. It's all I can do."

Leon scanned her face, desperate to convince her. But she looked so calm. She looked so sure. He said, "Catia, if they get in here, they will kill those children. What will you do then? Will you fight?"

Catia sighed again, "I will offer peace to them. It's what I swore to do."

Jesus.

This is why they needed her gone. She was a liability. She was so kind hearted, so pure, that her good natured love the world attitude was going to get everyone in this camp killed. She simply wouldn't pick a side. That's was neutrality was. It was an ability to choose no one and thereby offer the same to everyone.

He said, "They'll kill you and take your camp."

And Catia replied, "Maybe. But maybe they'll take the sanctuary I offer instead."

He studied her big, big eyes. "You're a fool."

And now she laughed, softly. "I might be. Or maybe a fool is someone who keeps on fighting and never searches for another solution. Why is the path always the sword, Leon? Why can't the path be a handshake? Why can't it be a truce? War is ugly enough. I won't bring it here to torture those who've already survived it."

She was so goddamn good. Noble.

And she was a fool.

She smiled sadly at him, "It's alright, Leon. I will die or I will survive. And so will you. All we can do, ever, is just keep staying true to ourselves while we do it."

They were alone. It was the perfect opportunity to slip a knife between her ribs and end her life. He could be gone through the small opening behind the fourth shelf in the storage room. He knew it would take him out into the woods and give him a clear path to evacuation.

Now was the time.

He could feel the knife strapped to his ankle. It was waiting for him to claim it and end her life.

Finish the job, Agent Kennedy. Finish it.

Finish her.

Her hands came up and fisted in his coat. His shifted, shifted, and caught her face. And he didn't finish her. He didn't finish his target at all.

He dropped his mouth to kiss her.

She made a sound and moved in against him. It was fast, almost desperate. He shoved her back on the desk and she kicked off her boots so his hands to take her pants. She pushed his jacket off him and went for his zipper.

It was wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong to want her. Wrong to want this. Wrong to do it.

He didn't care enough to stop.

Her little muscled body was warm beneath his hands. Her mouth was amorous and eager. He filled his hands with her curvy butt while she opened his zipper and took him in her desperate grip. They might have stopped, maybe, but he didn't want to stop.

He didn't want to do anything but feel her.

She shoved him into the chair by the desk and mounted him. They gasped, he grunted. She slid onto his body and sucked him into hers and they were both shivering with it. His pants brushed the insides of her legs gruffly as she rode his body. He caught her face, she twisted her fingers into his hair. The chair squeaked. She was wet and tight and slick. His hands gathered her close. Her tiny breasts pressed against his chest as he jerked her shirt over her head to touch her.

It was a murderous fucking. She was, literally, fucking the man who was sent to murder her. He set his teeth to her breast and she trapped his arms over their heads to kiss him. She shivered, she gasped his name. Leon, she moaned, Leon. Was he?

He didn't feel like Leon Kennedy anymore.

He didn't feel anything but need for her. And need to save her. How did he savor her and save her and save them all?

Catia licked his mouth and he opened his to take her tongue. She rode him, milked him, made him yearn. His hands cupped her bottom to lift her and bring her down on his thrusting cock. Her face…her face said she was in love with him. What did his say?

Did it say he was betraying her even while he fucked her raw?

Catia grabbed his slick shoulders and bounced, bounced, and drove a cry from his mouth. Wet, hot, they slapped together and came together, almost simultaneously. She slumped against him, trembling. His hands gripped her ass to slid her against his sticky shaft.

Jesus.

He'd come here to finish her.

He had. He'd finished her while she screamed and bounced.

Jesus.

She lifted her head to look down at him. He cupped her face in one hand. She whispered, "All we have is what we take, Leon. And what we make from the ashes of what's left when the world burns around us. Your world is what you make it."

They kissed, smooth and wet. And he knew, he knew, if he didn't kill her that they'd remove him from the mission and do it anyway. He'd be disciplined and probably killed. If he didn't kill her, they'd kill her and him and take her camp anyway.

And then they'd torture Sherry. Sherry…who looked like Dasha. Sherry…who was so little and had no one to protect. Do the job, Mr. Kennedy, or we'll kill the girl.

So he had to do the job.

He didn't have any choice here. He didn't have the power to fight back. He didn't have anything but eighteen hours now to report in that the mission was done. His time here was up. And he was buried inside of her body while she kissed him.

He held her face and she must have seen something on him because she intoned, with concern, "What is it? What?"

"I'm so sorry. I'm sorry. We can't let the bad guys win."

Catia lifted both brows and smoothed his hair back from his face. "We?"

"…I'm so sorry."

He saw the moment she realized what he was telling her. He saw the moment she realized he was, maybe, one of those bad guys inside her walls. She opened her mouth and he cupped the back of her neck and stuck the knife into her sternum. He angled it up and under her ribcage. He put it into her heart and held it there while she gasped, wetly.

He was shaking so bad. His hands, his arms, his body…it was trembling. With fear. With regret. With sorrow. She slumped against his body, bleeding all over him. It was so warm and wet against him. Like she'd been. Warm and wet around him.

Oh god.

He said it again, so, so softly, "I'm so sorry."

And she went still atop him.

A long moment passed. He made a small sound of remorse. He was desperately afraid he would cry. He eased her body off him and laid her beneath the desk. He folded her hands on her chest and closed her eyes.

A good woman. A good woman. She'd been good. Good. He'd felt the shiver of love in him for him. He'd failed his first mission. Because he'd loved his target.

And killed her to protect a little girl with big blue eyes.

Killed her.

Killed.

He changed out of his bloody clothes and into a spare set in her office locker. He buried the bloody clothes in the trash and took the bag. He turned off her office light and closed the door.

He wanted…to say goodbye to Dasha. He wanted to stop seeing the blood on his hands from a woman that just wanted to help everyone. He wanted to get the fuck out of there.

He could only do one of those things. He took his stashed bag and looped it, he ducked into the escape route behind the shelves, and he fled the building. He fled the camp. He disappeared like he'd never been there. A ghost. A wraith. A shadow.

A lie.

Whatever he was, he wasn't a man anymore.

He made it halfway to his evacuation point and dropped to his knees in the snow. He put his face in his bloody hands and broke. It hurt. It hurt and wheezed out of his lungs and burned as he brought the air back in. He cried into his regret and watched more than her blood drip into the snow and disappear.

He watched what was left of Leon Kennedy wash away. The rookie who'd wanted to save the world. They'd hollowed him out and killed him. They'd killed Leon Kennedy.

And all that was left of him was The Executioner.

And he started to remake the world from the ashes of what had burned to the ground around him.


	4. The World Without Her

BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM  
....  
Episode 4: The World Without Her  
....

 

The government had taken the camp slightly after. He'd given them the keys to victory and establishing a base of operations adjacent to an Umbrella stronghold in the Caucasus. It was through that toehold, three years later, that Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine would track down the final members of Umbrella and finish the corporation once and for all.

He'd given them all the keys to its destruction. It had been a blow for the good guys. He was a growing name in the field for it. He was a hero. He was a liar. He was a fake. He was a killer.

A hero? He wasn't a hero. He was a machine.

Chris Redfield had earned his stripes in a similar fashion. But his titles were bought in blood and fire. He'd burned, he'd destroyed, and he'd taken no prisoners.

In one hand, they were both brutal killers. In the other, they were both heroes. And the truth? It was somewhere in between.

The thing they had in common?

They'd both once loved the same girl.

But only one of them had lost her.

Back before he'd ever been a hero - when he was just a guy in love with a girl he couldn't hold on to.  
....

 

Ann Arbor, Michigan - 2001  
....

 

He turned the wheel, angled the truck into the driveway beside the red Miada parked there.

The Miada was filled with boxes.

Brows lifted, Leon stepped from the vehicle. The house was simple. White siding and red awnings. A flower box filled with Iris no longer in bloom.

He opened the door to the house to find her there, gingerly packing china in another box.

Her red hair was held off her face by a sloppy ponytail. She wore a track suit that framed her thin shoulders and long legs.

Leaning on the door frame to the kitchen, Leon watched her and said nothing.

Finally, unable to take the silence, she turned to face him. "Wow, you actually came back."

He lifted both brows at her. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

Claire Redfield, the only woman he'd ever attempted to live with, and one of the only he'd ever attempted to love, studied him.

"Hard to say. You leave, without a word, in the middle of the night. I don't hear from you or see you for almost a month. What should I have thought, Leon? That you got lost on your way to McDonald's?"

She turned to continue packing China. What was the answer here? He couldn't tell her anything. Not a word. That's what his job was: things that had never happened. He couldn't tell her a thing.

"I was working. You know that. You know what my job is like."

Claire shook her head again. "You're a Federal Agent. But you told me, you promised me, it wasn't going to be like this. You said you might be gone for a day or two sometimes. A DAY OR TWO. Not a fucking month. You know how much I hate when Chris pulls that shit."

"I'm sorry." And he was. "I would have called if I could have. But it wasn't an option."

Calire slammed down a set of salt and pepper shakers, shattering one. "Oh really? You gonna tell me you were on a secret mission in a secluded village thousands of miles from here?"

He would not laugh. He knew she was being sarcastic. If only she knew how right she was.

"No phones. No running water. Just a bunch of evil gang members holding some government official hostage. And, of course, sending in only one man to save this VIP." She used her fingers to do air quotes around VIP. She snorted at herself, dumping the broken pieces of the salt shaker in the trash. "This isn't a movie, Leon. And that plot is way too tired to even dignify. Don't be trite. And don't feed me cliches."

Sadly, trite cliches were a staple in his business. It was an episode of Alias up in this bitch. He couldn't tell her anything. None of it. He'd already broken rules just by telling her he was attached to the government. That, alone, was too much information. The only reason he'd said anything was because she was Claire Redfield and not some sweet little nobody in the middle of nowhere.

Leon said nothing. She was dead set against believing him now in any case.

"It's my job, Claire. You know that. You knew it when you moved in."

Furious, she chucked the pepper shaker. It hit the wall an inch from his face and he didn't even flinch. Part of what he loved about her was her passion. It permeated everything it touched. It was enthralling. Additionally? If she'd wanted to actually hit him with that pepper shaker, she'd have hit him. She wasn't just another pretty face. She was angry. But she didn't want to hurt him.

"I had to go to my engagement party ALONE, Leon. ALONE. Can you even begin to understand that? My fiancé went missing two days before our engagement party."

Leon took a step toward her and she lifted a hand to hold him.

"On top of that, he comes back looking pale and starved and smelling like another woman."

Ok. That was an easy explanation. He could put that away in a matter of seconds. But her face? It said she was already convinced where he'd been. Cheating.

How would the truth fit into her little rage filled fantasy she was using to hurt him here? Technically, he probably did smell of another woman. He'd been in Darfur. He'd been there, not to save a woman, not to fuck one - to kill one. He'd been under cover in a whore house run by a notorious international terrorist turned madam. She was a key player in the underground dealings of Umbrella - she'd fled Raccoon days before the downfall and taken up residence in Paris.

When the facility there had fallen, she'd fled even further. A wise woman - she'd kept her dealings under the cover of the sex trade until the wrong whore had had some pillow talk with the wrong john and brought the wrong eyes down on her business.

They'd sent him in to interrogate her and finish her off.

No fucking. But he'd played the part well until she'd been on the edge - and he'd put her down with a knife to the back of the neck. He'd made the mistake with his first mission.

He'd barely come back from that. Barely. BARELY. But he had. Why? The woman currently leaving him. He'd found her easily enough. He'd sought her out. They'd had lunch.

They'd had each other in the bathroom of the little cafe where they'd enjoyed coffee.

They'd moved in together three weeks later.

He hadn't so much as looked at another woman since. He'd done his job like the robot they'd trained him to be.

He'd never broken protocol since Russia. Ever. He hadn't cheated on Claire. And he'd have rather been here with her than anywhere else on Earth.

But he had no choice. None. He didn't own his own life anymore. He was a slave to the "man".

Hard to explain that to your fiance when she was throwing things at you.

Especially since it was classified and talking about it could get them both killed.

"You stink like some bitch. You come home all cucumber cool and bored about it. You stand there staring at me like I'M the crazy one...and I'm supposed to shake it off and say, oh well, he was working."

She grabbed her box, hefting it. "Sorry. No dice. I'm out of here."

"...you're wrong here, Claire. Wrong."

"Tell me the truth than. What is it? What was so important it cost you us? Hmm? What?"

He shook his head. "It's my job, god damnit, my job. You know that."

"Fuck your job. And fuck you."

Now he laughed, angrily. "You kiss your brother with that mouth?"

She gave him the finger and shoulder shoved him out of the way to go past him.

Leon stared at her for about three minutes before he turned, started down the hallway and shed his holster, tossing it negligently over the couch as he moved.

He could hear her cursing as she slammed in and out of the house.

He freed himself of his black shirt, undid his belt to take off his pants.

And the slamming of the door was lost under her footsteps.

She was standing in the doorway looking at him.

He knew it was a helluva sight. His back was covered in bruises, his chest not faring much worse. He had taken a hatchet in the shoulder, a bullet in the thigh. He probably looked like hell and felt worse.

"God, what happened to you?"

He turned his eyes, and looked at her through a veil of dark blonde hair.

"I was at an orgy. Fucking every chic in sight. Sometimes, things get out of hand." His voice was laced with sarcasm.

Claire shook her head, stepping toward him. "God, why do you do what you do?"

He shrugged, walking in his briefs to the bathroom to flick on the light and wash his face.

Her voice followed him. "You're not going to ask me to stay?"

He considered her in the reflection of the mirror. He loved her. Maybe more then he had ever loved another woman.

But what kind of life could he offer her when she didn't trust him? And he couldn't give her a reason to.

He couldn't give her children. He couldn't give her a life she deserved. It was better, better, BETTER to let her go. Clean break. Over and done. Claire - I took this gig to save you and Sherry. Claire - I can't tell you anything about it...ever. Our life would be a lie.

"Why? We both know I'll get called away again. And that you'll hate me by the end of it. Better to make the break cleanly now."

Her face went from sympathy and pity to anger. "Fine. You asshole. That's just fine. And bruises or not, I can SMELL her on you anyway."

She said her in a way that implied she just KNEW who he'd been with.

Who did she think he was fucking?

Besides himself. He was fucking himself out of the best thing to ever happen to him. He was doing it to spare her a life spent in anger and regret and distrust. He was saving her.

She'd figure that out one of these days.

And off Claire went again, slamming doors.

Leon, ignoring her, moved to the bed and fell face down upon it.

She was leaving him. That was fine. He couldn't even find the energy to care. Without her, at least he'd be numb again.

He was asleep, dead to the world, before she'd even made it out the front door.

She lingered, watching him sleep. He was so hurt, he was so close to broken. Was she wrong here? Was she wrong?

She couldn't do it. She couldn't play the housewife while he ran around the world getting blown up and beat up and nearly killed. She couldn't.

It was lowering to know it, but she wasn't ready to be a widow. She loved him too much to stand there and watch him die.

She wasn't the type to handle being handed a flag and thanked for his service. She'd spit on them, on it, on the purpose of it. Why didn't he just quit?

She didn't understand.

But she knew she couldn't stand by anymore and watch him do it.

Claire leaned down and kissed his temple, closing her eyes against the pain of leaving him.

She was doing them both a favor. She was.

This was the right thing.

She sat her bag down by the bed. She pressed a kiss against the back of his neck. He cracked and eyelid, watching her. She stroked his hair off his face.

Leon rolled, just a little, and she came down atop him.

They kept on rolling until she was on the bottom. She bicycled her legs, toed off her shoes, and made a small sound. He let her tug him free of his briefs. He nuzzled her mouth up to kiss her.

She anchored her feet to his calves and took him into her like she did his tongue.

Fast. It was bed springs and gasps. It was her small sounds of pleasure and his. She was easy on his back as she held on. She was rough on his soul as she tried to take it with her when it was done.

They clashed and came and died.

And lay together in the aftermath, panting.

She whispered, "...I can't marry you."

He lay with his mouth beside her ear, shaking and sweaty and breathing heavy, "...I know that."

She turned her face. He lifted his. They clung, watching each other now.

And she said, hoarsely, "I'm so sorry. I am. I love you."

They kissed, smooth and soft. He stroked his thumbs over her face, whisking away the beads of sweat, "I love you. There's no anger here, Claire. None. You don't have to marry me to love me. Tell me what you want here."

She looked at him so sadly. They knew he couldn't give her what she wanted. They both knew it. But she said, "The timing is bad here, Leon. It's just bad timing. Maybe it won't always be. But now? Maybe we take this as...not goodbye...but see ya later."

He nodded, he lifted his arm, and she slid out from beneath him. She dressed, feeling a throbbing pain in her chest. It was the right thing. It was. It was right to leave this, as it was, without hate or anger...just regret.

They were being grown ups, ending it this way.

It was a cold comfort as she left and hated herself for it.

And he lay on the bed with the scent of their lovemaking, mourning her.  
.....

 

UNITED STATES STRATEGIC COMMAND (USSTRATCOM) - Washington, D.C. - 2002  
......

 

Leon rolled the pen between his fingers, studying the slide show on the wall in front of him.

In an isolated army outpost deep in the Amazon jungle, Carlos Oliveira was leading 70 soldiers on the front line of United State's fight against its biggest biosecurity threat yet: the drug trade.

Oliveira's platoon was tasked with patrolling a 155 mile stretch of the border with the world's top cocaine producer Colombia in a bid to stem the flow of illegal drugs and arms that was fueling a war between criminal gangs in Brazil.

Javier Hidalgo was the leader of the drug cartel, the Sacred Snakes, a specialist operation mastered by the US government to disrupt illegal trafficking in Latin America. With the murder of nearby rivals, the Snakes were able to dominate much of the Amazon and, with influence over law enforcement, their only major threat were Communist guerrillas

Hidalgo took de facto control over a large area of the jungle and wanted to expand his territory. He ruled the entire area absolutely. Consequently, the small government was unable to do anything about Javier's control of the drug trade. The Colombian authority had reached out to the US for assistance in shutting him down.

The drugs coming out of Hidalgo's operation had been contaminating surrounding countries and were starting to emerge in the lower parts of the States. The black tar heroin taking over New Mexico and Arizona was a particular concern.

Javier was amassing a fortune in drug money, building up his own private army, and fortifying his operations. He was a wanted criminal in many countries, and was a known sadist. He ruled through fear and torture. He'd made videos of killing his competitors similar to those seen in terrorist organizations abroad: beheading with dull knives, binding them to chairs and instructing his followers to perform sexual genocide upon the prisoner, taking responsibility for mass bombings and heavy crime spree killings.

But he was also heavily protected in his region. The political red tape involved in getting him extradited was cock blocked at every turn. In some parts, he was a "Robin Hood" to the locals as he invested heavily in the towns he wanted to use as mules for his production and brought commerce to an intensely poor region.

The local town of Amparo held great respect for the group due to Hidalgo's generous contributions to its rise from a simple wide spot in the road to a heavy trade hub in the region. Amparo was currently the target of alot of interest on the part of USSTRATCOM.

Why? Because they were pretty sure Hidalgo wasn't just dealing in drugs. He was pandering in Bio Organic Weapons against the guerrillas he was battling. Intel had leaked regarding a project in play loosely defined as Code:Remnants. What they could acquire on the project suggested that locals were being abducted for test subjects. Those who didn't qualify for the project were being marketed as slaves. He was a real peach, Hidalgo: drugs, bio weapons, human trafficking - a real prince.

The clamoring to eliminate him was intercontinental now.

It was only a matter of time before they sent in a team to dispose of him - off the books and away from the red tape that legally stopped them. Different government sanctions prevented a direct assault. Oliveira was trying to get them a toehold to sneak in - and take him out quietly.

His handler, a man named Evan Dumas, turned to study his face as the presentation closed down. "You get where we're going with this right?"

Leon laughed, lightly. "I can read the not so subtle writing on the wall here, Evan. You want me to take care of it."

Dumas was handsome, young, and eager. He was all quick wit and clever remarks. He'd fought his way up from a junior agent quickly, kicking in the metaphorical teeth and climbing over the backs of anyone who got in his way. He was a scrapper, a crack shot, and a helluva handler. He never let Leon go in without all the key players, the outcomes, and the possibilities in place.

"There's a catch though, J.F.K. And one you should be really aware of before you say yes or no." J.F.K. - Leon's call sign. Stupid name. But a direct play on the Kennedy angle. And the fact that mixed up in that mess of history, there was likely a link to the long dead president. Shit, the guy was such a man whore, he'd probably had more bastards than he'd known what to do with anyway.

"I'm all aflutter with anticipation, really." Leon swirled the pen through his fingers, oozing antipathy.

Evan grinned, propping a hip on the desk in his thousand dollar Armani suit, "SOCOM is send you back up."

Surprised, Leon lifted a brow, "Really? On an off the books mission?"

Evan nodded, sighing a little, "It's tricky and messy. The area is over run with hostiles in a heavy power play right now. There's evidence of protests against the coup that Hidalgo has started staging in the outlying areas. It's political quick sand. They're worried you might set off bells and alarms alone. The guy they're sending is heavily trained in demolitions and subterfuge. A pretty combination. I viewed his file folder - and he's been in on some pretty heavy hits in the last few years. In fact, there was mention of you two knowing each other."

Leon tilted his head, waiting. "Who is it?"

"Krauser? Jack Krauser? Call sign is Silverdax."

Shit.

Leon's eye twitched. His brain reverted, flashing those 100 days at him in a horror movie reel through his cerebral cortex. The last thing in the world he wanted was to ever see Krauser again.

Ever.

How in the hell was that idiot still alive? He was like fire and gasoline, he should have exploded and burnt himself up by now.

But Leon mused, "Is he an expert on the area?"

Evan shook his head, moving behind his desk to leaf through a folder, "Nope. Just on killing shit. There's a guide headed down that way attached to a private paramilitary organization. Interestingly enough, the guide came highly recommended by Barry Burton with the F.B.C."

Leon continued to sit there, looking curious.

"Right...right. No one told you. We set up a commission to deal with this kind of shit, the Federal Bioterror Commission. We work with global entities to try to subvert outbreaks in other countries. It helps us maneuver in international waters with less red tape."

Smart. About four years too late to help Raccoon, Leon mused, but still smart.

"Alright. Burton...former S.T.A.R.S. guy?"

"Yep." Evan handed Leon the folder, "He's working the F.B.C. and a small faction of Anti-Umbrella free lancers. One of those has been in South America for months now, getting the lay of the land to help with Hidalgo."

"And you want me to meet up this guide?"

"Yep. You and Krauser. Get to Hidalgo, get an idea of how bad it is, eliminate Hidalgo and stop the spread of B.O.W.'s and the virus."

Leon pursed his lips with dry humor, "Is that all?"

Evan smirked a little.

And Leon went on, "You want me to meet a leprechaun and find the pot of gold too?"

"Sure. See if you can find out what happily to Natalie Wood while you're at it, would ya? I heard she died somewhere around there. I'd love to know why."

Leon chuckled lightly, "When am I leaving?"

He rose, he studied the rain beyond the window of the office, and Evan answered, "We have a cessna with your name on it heading out of at 1800 hours from the airfield."

Cessna, Leon mused, a fancy word for a chartered plane. "Got it. I'll be on it."

He pulled his phone from his pocket as he walked. He had a little message on it that had him pausing.

Leon flipped open the phone to read it. It was cryptic. It was odd. It was one of many he received at random times lately.

Don't trust anyone.

Did he need a random cryptic warning about that?

He couldn't even remember the last time he'd bothered anyway. But he messaged it back anyway, not really expecting a response.

You mean like random weirdos who anonymously message a private government phone?

To his surprise, the phone beeped again at him with an answer.

Things are not always what they seem to be. Protect her.

He paused, listening to the people around him. Her? Who was her?

Who was he protecting?

But it would go unanswered. As things so often did for him these days.

The phone didn't beep again, no matter how many times he messaged.


	5. Episode 5: The Conspiracy

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 5: The Conspiracy**

* * *

**Washington D.C.**

* * *

The heavy sound of propellers lulled him into sleep.

He wasn't a man who slept well on good days, so somehow - aboard a plane - he could find just a little bit of peace. The cessna was comfortable, graced with a single flight attendant and the pilot, and private; a veritable playground of awesome.

The flight attendant was pretty, young, and eager. She brought him peanuts and a drink. She chatted happily at him. She was blonde and lovely and flirted comfortably in a way that wasn't really personal. She giggled and joked and strapped in across from him as they left the tarmac.

She mused, watching his face, "I thought most federal agents were old and ugly."

He grinned, winking at her, "I thought most flight attendants were dumb and jaded."

She laughed, her name tag flashed Rachel at him in pretty silver scrawl, and she replied, "I prefer stewardess. Fuck that P.C. shit that says you have to call me something else. My Mom was a stewardess for thirty years. She was proud of it. And so am I."

He tilted his head, liking her, "Right on. For the record?"

Rachel grinned, enjoying his company.

"Most agents don't look like me. I'm not really an agent, I just play one on t.v."

She giggled and reached over to pat his knee.

They chatted easily about life and work and the wonders of the great wide world. She talked about coming from Kansas, like Dorothy, and looking to see the world. Rachel laughed, "As a pretty girl from Sunny Corners, Kanasa - you have two choices to break free of that. Stewardess...and hooker."

Leon laughed, lightly, "Some people might think they're one in the same."

Rachel chuckled, unoffended, and then she tilted her head at him, "I've never joined the mile high club, Agent Kennedy. I'm a good girl. Have you?"

He swirled his drink in his glass, amused, "Not in recent memory."

Rachel grinned again, "Oh? Interesting. So...this is a pretty long flight...I wonder what in the world we could do to pass the time?"

He liked her a great deal. He couldn't stop the laugh. It felt really good to relax and enjoy the company of a woman not trying to kill him or steal his soul. He flirted harmlessly with her until they were free of the runway and on their way.

Leon relaxed in his seat once they were in the air, feeling the pleasing occasional bobbling of turbulence that was almost like a loving mama rocking a baby to him. He nodded off, peacefully, with a lovely snifter of scotch in his gloved hand mostly empty.

He came awake in the middle of a nightmare.

The flight attendant shook him, shouting Spanish.

Leon sprung out of his seat to find the plane tossing and tumbling, jerking and swirling. He could barely hold his feet as it threw alarms in a high pitched squeal into the smoky air.

They were on fire. They were taking fire. From whom? For what?

The pilot's voice echoed, "The right engine is lost! We're losing power to the left! We're over the ocean but there's no choice! Get to the emergency parachutes!"

The plane rocked again, taking another blow from whoever was trying to take them down. The right wing squealed and sparked, sending up flames into the sky as it was sheared away in a burst of gunfire.

And the plane gave up trying to stay in the air.

It dipped right, it rolled. The flight attendant screamed and grabbed for the parachute packs above them. Leon strapped his assault bag over his chest, grabbed the other and strapped it on. The girl was weeping and shaking, but he helped her strap in and said, calmly into the din of madness, "Breathe. BREATHE. Panicking will get you killed. Just breathe."

She met his eyes, sobbing, but gathered strength from how calm he was. She nodded, grabbing his arm to follow him to the emergency doors.

Leon grabbed the handle, the pilot came running from the cockpit, and the plane took another barrage of gunfire.

The world was burning, acrid with the stench of jetfuel and blazing metal. The emergency hatch opened and the sky followed them into the plane. There was no more peace. The wind tried to snatch them out into its maw, sucking and jerking against their braced bodies it peeled away the hatch door and threw it out somewhere into space.

Leon guided the flight attendant first and told her, over the rushing wind and crackling flame, "Pull the chord when you're clear, do you understand?"

She nodded and he pushed her free into the wind while she screamed. What choice was there?

The pilot followed her out, muttering and shaking.

Leon was last, barely exiting the burning plane before it decided it had had enough of pretending to even want to stay in the air. It plummeted, like a stone, racing toward the ocean in a blazing ball of glory. It caught fire in total, soaking the sky with eager flapping flame and destruction. It was like a comet, slicing through the clouds to make its mark on the world.

Leon circled in the air, dropping rapidly, swirling n the jet spin created by the plunging plane.

The gunfire sounded around him as their aggressors tried to finish them off.

He pulled his cute, felt the ripcord release and expel the umbrella of his salvation, and he circled in the wind while bullets whizzed around him.

He watched the pilot get blasted out of the sky in a burst of blood.

Rachel circled twice in a whipping move, trying to get control of her parachute. She glanced up at him, afraid, and he had nothing to reassure her. Nothing. It was a nightmare.

He could do nothing when they finally hit her. Her body jerked. Her eyes glazed. She gasped and sprayed blood in a red gust.

Helpless, he kept descending, waiting for his turn to join her. But they missed. They got his chute, they got the top of his ear in the closest call ever on record, but they didn't hit him directly. Not once.

He saw Rachel hit the water in her chute and became a red blur.

He hit the water slightly after, rapidly, his chute filled with holes. He sank. He heard the chunks and thunks of bullets striking water. Leon eased beneath the floating body of the flight attendant, using her blood to hide him.

He waited, holding his breath in the cold salt water.

The world still stunk of fire and death.

He floated, watching the wide open eyes of the dead girl who'd been so kind above him, and who was dead now because somebody didn't want him here. Somebody knew he was coming.

Somebody was protecting Hidalgo.

He raised his hand and closed her pretty eyes.

He listened to the attacker zip off through the sky, convinced he was dead.

And what had once been a mission was now personal.

Because the pretty stewardess who'd tried so hard to escape her humdrum small town was dead in the water like a piece of garbage. A sweet girl, she should have had a long life ahead of her. Instead? She was waiting to become dinner to a hungry shark that scented her blood.

And he tried to remember what he was fighting for.

* * *

**Outside Amparo - Somewhere in South America**

* * *

The humidity was a pressing, liquid hand on his chest. It took root in the pores and opened them to the brush of wet that met each step through the heavy foliage.

Beside him, the little man in the hat he'd met in Madera del Perro was looking nervous. Jack Krauser wasn't terribly fond of weird little oompa loompa people, and he'd encountered nothing but that since he'd gotten off the plane in Bogota. Was everyone south of the Equator a midget?

Apparently.

Krauser smirked to himself, picking at his fingernails with the enormous knife in his hand as the little all terrain jalopy he rode in came to a halt in the heavy jungle.

" _..._ _señor el camino está bloqueado."_

Krauser sighed, "Why is it blocked?"

The little man shifted, looking frightened. "... _hay disturbios ... la policía está empleando la fuerza para detener a los insurgentes ..."_

Krauser sighed again, shifting in the cracked leather seat. He listened the sounds of the riot the man was talking about. The town beyond had exploded in civil war apparently. The police were employing crown control measures. They were using bean bag guns and tear gas. Amused, Krauser watched the pitch fork wielding mob fall beneath the assault of the local authorities.

Laughing, he muttered, "Heathens, seriously.  _Jorge..._ _¿por qué están revolcándose? Cualquier idiea?"_

George looked pale and scared, "...Hidalgo... _fabricante de demonios._ "

Krauser holstered his knife, listening and watching the tree line. Hidalgo was making demons, the little man was saying, from what? Code:Remnants was still gathering basis here. What they knew was that the backbone of the program involved human trafficking and mutation. It was suspected and rapidly becoming clear that, Javier Hidalgo had a desire to operate his own T-Virus based B.O.W.s, and control the entire Amazon ecosystem.

But what was this? A convenient riot? Timed just as he needed to get by?

Something stank in Denmark.

Krauser eyed the little man beside him, " _Dime cómo moverse por el pueblo. Necesito llegar a Amparo."_

He was hoping George could tell him how to bypass the riot and the village. He needed to get to Amparo. To do that, he needed to get to Kennedy and the guide in Mixcoatl. Fate, or circumstance, or some as yet soon to be dead idiot, was trying to prevent that from happening.

George spoke haltingly, wringing his hands. " _Evita el río ... toma el tren ... ten cuidado con los demonios disfrazados. Señor - No quieres que te lleven ... si te llevan ... nunca volverás."_

Avoid the river, George was saying, and take the train. He added a warning: Beware the devils in disguise, he said, if they take you, you won't ever come back alive.

Curious.

Krauser leaped out of the jalopy and patted the heavy metal side, "Thanks, George. Seriously, but I don't believe in devils. And I don't care about monsters. I'm the scariest thing in this jungle, I promise you."

He eased off through the heavy foliage, leaving the scared little man behind with the sounds of fighting.

It was going to be interesting to find out what fucking shit stain was the reason for the delay here. Some cowardly fool looking to meet the wrong end of Krauser's beast of a knife (aptly titled Gut Buster) was in for a rude awakening when he got where he was going.

Ignoring the scream of the dying he'd left behind, comforted somehow by the hail of gunfire in his wake, Krauser moved toward the sounds of the train yard.

The scent of river and the distant drone of tracks drew him like a beacon.

He was considering the ramifications of being buddied up with Leon Kennedy. They'd gotten along well enough once upon a time. Kennedy was ok, for a pretty faced stick in the mud. Krauser had a feeling he was going to be a stickler on not bending the rules to serve the mission.

Krauser bent them, broke them, and made his own when they didn't suit the purpose. It was why he was the best at what he did. His superiors gave him lots of leeway since his methods got results.

He was brutal - to the point of being the first guy they called to torture someone for information - and clever - allowing him to get out of troublesome situations alive and unharmed.

Kennedy had a reputation too, as it were, for being a bit of a wild card while operating within his own parameters. He'd saved civilians at the risk of the mission more than once and nearly shit the bed on a mission in Russia with some hold out against US occupation of her refuge camp. He'd come through, but the whispers talked about him having too big of a heart to serve their cause.

Heart, Jack mused, heart - what good did it do you to pity that which you hunted? Did the jackal? Did the lion? Did the wolf? No. They hunted and killed and took what they needed. In this case, they were here to execute an order.

He'd see it done, with or without some big eyed do gooder in his way.

Hefting his enormous girth of muscle, Krauser managed to grab the railing of the freight train as it barreled past him in the old trainyard as he came running from the jungle. He launched himself up and into the final car, watching the world race by.

In moments, the train was racing over the rapidly flowing river, offering a beautiful view of the jungle from high above. He could hear the howler monkeys giving their warning cries to those sought to infiltrate their territory. He could see flights of scarlet macaws in red, blue and green take wing in the heavy canopy that offered shade to the mossy areas beneath the humid sky line.

A pod of pink river dolphins skimmed over the surface of the rustling water beneath where the train rushed, blowing water and keening their mating calls that always reminded Jack of giggling. He studied the fins that broke the foaming waves and figured there had to be dozens of them down there playing in the warm tide.

He considered them before he pulled the picture from his hip pocket beneath his heavily outfitted holster. It was the one wide angle shot given to him by a mole in Bogota. Their "guide" was a woman.

He wasn't sure why it surprised him, but Barry Burton was often a man given to suggesting a softer escort. He'd been clear about this one being the best of the best.

Why was she familiar?

The picture was half of her profile and her back side. It was a nice ass. The suggestion of tits in the tiny top she wore was more than entertaining. But why did she click in his head like she did?

Where had he seen her?

It would come to him. It would.

Admittedly, following a woman was fucking annoying. They tended to be whiny and uptight and wimpy. He'd yet to find one that could trek over the mountains or through the heavy jungle without bitching. Shit, how could you really begin to trust something that bled for a week a month and didn't die? Women were, at the core, good for arm candy and fucking.

But this one was apparently the best there was with a knife.

He wanted to find out how good she was. It was so tempting to challenge her on first sight.

But that was counter productive to the mission.

White, if he'd taught them nothing else, had taught them all about finishing what they start, about taking their victory and earning their spoils. They'd finish the mission. Krauser studied the photo - and then he'd see who was the best there was with a knife.

It gave him a little thrill to anticipate the battle of it.

He could hardly wait to meet her.

* * *

**Day 51**

* * *

They bound him to the floor. They bound him in his own sweat. They bound him with his face to the side. He could almost see the man on the bed.

He could almost see the man in white.

"Why do you fight?"

He said nothing, breathing low and slow. Blood slid down his nose and curled in the corner of his eye.

The silence dragged.

The man in white said again, "Why do you fight?"

He blinked and the blood slid over his swollen socket to drip onto the floor. His back was a mess of slashes and marks. Someone had carved their name into his hip when he'd lost.

They'd stuck the electrodes to his open wounds to deliver the electricity while he'd lain there defeated.

Again, the question, "Leon Kennedy, why do you fight?"

His eyes shifted from the shadows beside the bed. He could see the crack in the door now. He could see the girl beyond it.

They'd stalemated in the pit together. They'd left with no one the victor.

Why did he fight?

She paused, as if she felt him, she turned her head. They locked eyes through the cracked door.

Why did he fight?

To see her again?

The man in white nodded and the shock rod hit his back. He jerked. The girl beyond the door lost the softness on her face. She shut down. But he saw the rage, so brief, so sharp - so fast. The rage against them for his pain.

Why did he fight?

Because she was still out there doing the same.

He stopped jerking from the shocks, gasping, bleeding.

White asked one last time, "Why do you fight?"

And he answered, finally, he answered hoarsely, "...to stay alive."

White nodded. He knelt and Leon's eyes rolled up to him where he lay on the floor, bruised and bleeding, but unbroken. "You will, Mr. Kennedy. You will stay alive. Long after your enemies are in ashes, you'll survive. Never give up. Never surrender. Unless you've nothing left to fight for."

The blood trembled on the tip of his nose...and dripped down to taunt him like a single red tear.

* * *

**Off the coast of Serpiente Rojas**

* * *

He pictured her face as he swam toward the shore. He pictured HER face.

He'd never seen her again. As if they'd known what she represented, they'd stripped her away and left him empty. Moonlight Sonata played behind his eyes now as he swam, a comfort when his brain tried to panic or offer emotion in the middle of madness.

He'd left Rachel floating in the ocean.

He'd left her there, like garbage.

He climbed out of the water, breathing heavy, but empty. Like a leviathan from the dark depths of his own inability to give up, he climbed free of the tossing waters to take on the promise of revenge...for a girl he'd met and didn't even really know. Is that what made a hero? A man who'd fight to avenge someone he'd never really met before?

Or was it simply to set right all that was wrong with the world? Would it cleanse the slate of his own evils to seek venegance for her immortal soul?

Would it restore some kind of...feeling? Would it offer back a few pieces of the man he'd left behind to be able to exist in the world where he found himself? Would it remind him what he was fighting for?

He was so often void. He'd laughed on that plane. He'd loved Claire. He was still a man beneath the husk they'd left. Surely, he was still a man. Why else was he still picturing that girl?

Why else was he still fighting?

He trudged up the shore toward the two men walking a dog in the sand. It didn't matter.

Right now? The only thing that mattered was finding his guide, stopping the T-Virus, and finishing the mission.

And putting a bullet between the eyes of Javier Hidalgo.


	6. The Guide

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 6: The Guide**

* * *

The curl of smoke rose from barely parted lips lined in a fine sheen of sweat.

Two small children played together in the distance, one dressed in a loin cloth constructed of a tattered, faded white rag. They both were dark and small, malnourished, with the bloated bellies that signified starvation.

Beyond them, patch work huts, less than ten of them, made up the heart of the village.

Bodies were stained dark by the sun, showing tattoos to signify unity amongst their people, piercings in honor of gods and deities that had died long ago in the modern world.

Women unconcerned of any social phobias, beyond the hindrance of propriety, carried baskets on their hips, bare breasts left to the eyes of those around them. Clothing, here, was hard to come by and unnecessary. It was the last thing the villages thought of - was what was socially acceptable.

It was, at once, both disheartening and enlightening.

Here, away from any kind of façade, life was simple. It was about surviving, about finding joy where you could, in your children, in a blackened piece of meat.

You didn't see people arguing over bills, scraping by for minimum wage and bitching for more.

You saw simplicity and it humbled you.

Beneath her back side, the hood of the black jeep had begun to burn with the heat of the afternoon sun.

Unlike the villagers, she'd yet to be able to release her very american standard of living.

She wore a white tank top, slick and stuck to the skin with sweat, and though it was thin and nearly transparent, it gave the illusion of being hidden. Ragged jeans shorts rode high on her thighs, though she'd given up the underwear beneath awhile back. It had a tendency to stand up on its own after a few days in the ragged humidity. Her feet were clad in heavy white socks and combat boots, necessary to walk the white hot sands of the desert before you hit the rainforest.

Her hair, bleached of color by the days of solar punishment, sat atop her head in a sloppy pony tail, the light brown strands tickling where they fell across the back of a sweaty neck.

The village didn't have a name. At least not one that she'd ever heard. It was too small to get a status like it's neighbor to the North: Amparo.

And that suited her just fine. The less names, the less faces, the less chance to be tracked by unwanted sources.

In the days since she'd started running, she'd be anywhere and everywhere and never stayed longer then necessary before moving on. She paid off informants to cover her tracks and to point would be assassins in another direction.

In the beginning, when money had been necessary, she'd used my ingrained skills to get it.

She'd lied, cheated, and she'd stolen everything. Dipped into corporate accounts, lifted wallets, gone of the grift to swindle people out of their hard earned dollar.

She supposed in some way, she should have felt guilty. But she hadn't.

The farther and the faster she ran, the more chance she had of finding something that could stop another outbreak, save a few more lives. So, to justify stealing, she told herself it was for the greater good.

To make things more safe for everyone involved, she'd parted ways with the only other person who really understood the necessity of what they were doing here.

Chris Redfield had gone on to Europe, to search for his sister, Claire.

From a handful of varying pay phones, they'd kept in touch through thirty second phone calls. Long enough to make sure the other was still alive, short enough not to be traced.

Carlos Oliveira and she had separated when they'd hit Cambodia.

It had been his idea. Easier, he'd said, to run. Safer, for everyone, if they weren't together.

The bad part of it was she'd started to develop feelings for him.

Were they brought on by surviving the horror of Raccoon City together? Were they brought on out of a desperate need to cling to another person who'd lived it?

It didn't matter. What mattered, was that he'd been so quick to let go.

Not a tear, not a qualm. Just a shake of two hands and his back as he'd left.

One of the children had moved over to offer a crust of black bread which she accepted with a smile.

The language here was its own.

It was a mix of Spanish, of English, of gibberish.

The strange part was, it was easy enough to learn.

She'd been there for nearly a month and communicated with them almost as well as did someone who'd been born there.

They didn't discriminate, or judge. They simply accepted her and all her many secrets.

Each one was a friend, a family member, and the only solace she'd found in so long.

She slid to the ground, the sand beneath her wafting up in a tiny golden cloud. It was mid-morning and the heat would only get worse as the day went on.

It was time to get a move on. She had a lot of ground to cover before dark.

It was a four hour drive across the sands to the closest real town. There she had a few "spies" that would feed her information, that kept an eye out for her.

It had been a long time, but she was still cautious. Waiting for the moment the men would show up to take her in. Until Umbrella was dead and buried, discretion was the better part of valor here.

Paranoia was your best friend.

The Jeep gave a delicate roar as it started, the engine sputtering to life like a sleeping bear.

The wheel was hot, forcing her to slip on a pair of black leather gloves to be able to touch it. It slid through her hands like butter as she turned, backing the all terrain vehicle down the sand and away from the village.

The drive, aided by the struggling hum of the air conditioner, was fraught with bumps and jumps. Likely, the shocks were bad.

Back and forth trips across burning sand dunes, tended to wear on a vehicle.

Her mind wandered as she drove, as it often did, back to those nights. The first ones.

The ones littered with fear and nausea, with pain and regret.

There had never been a moment, since that first night, in the mansion, and facing down the greatest betrayal she'd ever known, that she didn't look twice at a friendly face.

It seemed that she was always waiting for the moment someone would show their true colors.

Captain Wesker had stolen the ability to trust from her. He'd wrapped it in his grubby paws and ran with it, somewhere into the night. It was lost, under the blanket of death, under the stench of the decaying corpses of friends, of enemies. She couldn't find it, under the nightmares.

It had been, something like four years since those handful of days locked in hells embrace.

It had never seemed likely that everything she'd known, everything she'd believed, could be torn to pieces in the blink of an eye.

The Jeep gave a grumble, sliding over the loose rocks that made the main street of Jakarta.

Though giving Jakarta a main street, implied it had enough to have a street at all.

It was, essentially, a ghost town.

It had once been a booming center for shipping. The central town on the trade route from Columbia to Ecuador.

But with the economic decline of Jakarta that had come with the outbreak of heavy drug and human trafficking, the town had become desolate. The money had stopped flowing, and had gutted it, leaving behind a shell.

Now the buildings were boarded, the houses that stood around abandoned and forsaken.

The stone had started to dissolve, from the rays of the sun, from years of neglect. The only building besides the general store that was still open, was the saloon.

Zhao Fang's was the heart of the town.

If you wanted anything. From black market goods to bootleg liquor, this was the place to go.

Zhao and she had reached an understanding. After a few coarse words, and a few well placed blows. He respected her and out of that respect, he spied for her.

He had contacts in every major city in South America. They fed him information about anything suspicious. And subsequently, he fed that information to her…for a price.

Lately, the well had nearly run dry on information.

With Umbrella floundering, at least in the eyes of the known world, there hadn't been too many inquiries into the missing S.T.A.R.S and the cover up implemented to frame them for the fall of Raccoon City.

Her boots kicked up dust, landing on the sand beyond the gravel.

The rays of the sun beat down on her head, forcing the sweat to begin to bead on the back of the neck, wetting the collar of the tank top.

Zhao Fang's was little more then aged brick with a rotting wood door. The sandstone of some of the buildings adjacent gave it a nearly Old West feel. The fingers of the Spanish culture hadn't extended this far west, offering no sense of style or old world.

Her hand, gloved in black leather, hit the door, spilling the harsh light of the desert sun into the dank interior of the building.

The inside, much like the outside, was Spartan. Basic, in the most literal sense of the word.

There were two tables, tiny and notched with knife wounds, sporting a single chair a piece. The wood of the chairs having seen better days before the fall of Jakarta.

To one side, a polished bar sat, the only point of beauty in the stark room.

It was well tended, glossy, and the man that stood beyond it gave it class.

Zhao was tall for an asian, six two and thin as a rail. His face was lined with scars, one bisecting his cheek, curving dangerously close to his eye. Another obscured the perfect line of his forehead beneath the glossy black of his long hair.

She slid onto the only stool in the room, silently waiting for him to speak.

When he did, under the dim light of the dirty window beyond the bar, it was in clean, pure, nearly perfect English.

"Been wondering when you'd pop in."

"You got something for me?"

He leaned on the bar, looking at her carefully.

He'd made it clear, more then once, that payment could be made in ways other than barter.

But as far as sex went, he was the last person she wanted in her panties...or lack there of as it were.

"Depends." He glanced, quite openly, at the press of her braless breasts beneath the tank. "You got something for me?"

She gave him a smile that was more shark than human.

"I took care of DiArnio, didn't I? And without a trace. I'd say that earns me a freebie."

He met her eyes again and there was a clean moment of staring down the other.

Fang looked away first, moving to the cabinet behind the bar.

"I still don't know how you did it."

She wanted to say, " _I seduced him, and while he undressed to prepare to fuck me, I slit his throat and dragged his body out into the desert for the vultures_."

What she said was, "Doesn't matter. Does it?"

He glanced over the shoulder of his silk Armani shirt. "Guess not."

There was the stirring of paper as he tossed a manila folder across the bar at her.

She put a hand down, catching it as it tried to slide off the polished surface to the floor.

It fluttered open when she caught, revealing a stapled set of papers and two glossy photographs. One obviously taken from a far distance, the other from more close up.

Her eyes turned down, bypassing the papers to the pictures.

In the first, there was the familiar outline of Serpiente Roja's, a city outside of Amparo. And the man leaving Viesta's Tea Emporium.

Viesta's was a cover, a front, for the black market.

And anyone, and everyone knew, the place to go when you wanted something done quickly, quietly, and without a trace.

The man in the picture was armed, though cleverly concealing it, under a lightweight black jacket.

He was bigger then anyone around him, both taller and broader.

Though the body that showed through the black, body riding shirt and the carpenter khakis was lithe, honed, and obviously strenuously maintained.

Perched on his nose were six hundred dollar Oakley's, the black lenses obscuring any chance of recognition through the eyes.

But the face was handsome, nearly painfully so. Sporting a nearly shaggy crop of hair the color of good wheat, lost somewhere between brown and blonde. He had an aristocrats face; the aquiline nose, the pouting lover's lips, and a brow both smooth and proud.

She set the photo aside, reaching for the second.

She had to pause, had to take a moment to remember that this man in the picture, was possibly an enemy of hers. Although she was there to "assist" him, it wasn't clear that he could be trusted. Could anyone? The age old question.

But, lord have mercy, it was a good picture.

It was a profile shot, catching him unaware from less then ten feet, his attention on something beyond the camera's eye.

Without the glasses, the profile was perfect, nearly artistic.

The jacket was gone, the holster strapped like skin around his chest nakedly showing his sidearm to the light of day.

The shirt was blue this time, good, solid blue, the color of strong sapphire. It gloved itself against a body that had likely been spawned from the pages of a wet dream. The arms, currently with one lifted to shield his eyes from the blazing sun, were capped with muscle, nearly roped with it. The biceps, without even being flexed, perfectly shaped and made, it seemed, for the right mouth to latch-

With a small laugh, she shook my head, clearing her thoughts.

It was an effort to set the picture aside, to pick up the pages of paper, to bury the image of those eyes, the same blue as a cloudless winter sky, from her mind.

The pages went into more detail, giving an account of his activities.

He'd been followed, since his inquiries at Viesta's. The PI who'd shadowed him speaking of his various questions, both to local authorities, and to not so legal front runners of the cartel underground.

He'd been looking, it seemed, for information on Javier Hidalgo.

Why? No one knew. He didn't say.

And he wouldn't.

Government agents never did.

She perused the rest of the paper, got the details on him. The PI only knew that he was looking for information, he didn't know his name, where he was from, though he suspected he was an agent for the US government. Though a one eyed monkey with half a brain would have known that.

Mr. Wet Dream Monthly reeked of agent.

And according to the documents, he was three steps from finding answers. Apparently a tip off from Nina Muerte, a liaison for the Brazilian Embassy, had turned Mr. Agent onto Viesta's. And he'd known just the right buttons to press to get someone to squeal.

She pushed away from the bar, meeting Fang's curious eyes.

"You about to rabbit on me?"

She shook my head, palming the folder, and setting it on her hip.

"He's just one man. I can handle it." She turned to glance over the interior of the bar. "But I won't lead him back to the village. I'm pretty sure he's my contact."

Fang reached under the bar, pulling out a set of aged copper keys.

"This is for my safe house at the edge of town." He took one off, sliding it over the bar. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

She studied the key and then his face. "You gonna make me pay for this later?"

He gave me a charming, wicked smile. "Would I do that?"

She smiled dully at him, picking up the key. "Does the place have running water?"

"Naturally. And its even furnished pretty well. I rent it out to contacts of mine when they swing into town on business."

She nodded, stepping from the bar. "If he shows up Fang, point him in my direction."

"You want me to let him find you?"

Did she?

"I'm here to meet him. Or he's here to meet me. He may not come alone either. They mentioned a second one. If you hear anything else, about a second contact..."

"They train these fuckers to kill on sight, Valentine."

"I know. I can handle it."

Jill turned, stepping back toward the door, the click of her boots loud in the twilit interior of the saloon.

She had to know, didn't I? And the only way to know, was to let him come.

When he did, when she'd divested him of everything he knew, he could either be on the side of the cause and earn her allegiance to locate Hidalgo or he could join DiArnio out in the desert. One more dead body, to stay alive, didn't seem like such a sacrifice.

Jill just hoped those blue eyes, didn't haunt her for the rest of her days.

The safe house wasn't the Four Seasons but compared to where she'd been living for the past year, it was close.

It was a single story two bedroom sandstone on the edge of Jakarta.

The outside, when first glimpsed, showed nothing more then another gutted specter of its brethren.

But once you passed the door, painted a dull, flaking red, you found the inside both clean, well maintained, and nicely furnished.

The entry way doubled as a living room, decorated with a soft navy couch that looked to be crushed velvet. It sat atop a Persian rug, obviously imported and hand crafted in swirling designs of tiny suns and stars.

The celestial motif extended through the room. The walls done in shades of midnight blue and etched with tiny gold stars. Nights in the desert were raw, nearly miserably cold, the only sign of winter in the vast wasteland.

A fireplace sat off against the far wall, taking the place of what should have been a television. It was dead, sporting ash and a half burned log that had likely laid dormant for a long time.

To the right, through an archway, the kitchen sat. A tiny table, draped over with a white linen table cloth, and two small chairs. Appliances that had likely been purchased around the stone age. A wood burning stove.

It didn't matter in the slightest. The Iron Chef wouldn't be dropping in to make Crème bru lei any time soon.

The kitchen was off-white, basic in its color scheme, a potted flowering cactus sitting on the windowsill above the narrow metal sink.

Jill moved passed it, stepping down the hallway, which sported prints of Munch's The Scream and Vampire, on its pale gold walls.

It branched off into a T at the end of the hall offering on one side a full bath and on the other a bedroom.

The bathroom had walls that were soft cream, a single black and white portrait of Big Ben encased in fog sat across from the sink which was old fashioned, white, sporting a clawed base and gold taps. The toilet was the same green as the shower, dark, nearly hunter green. The shower itself was open, without a door or a curtain, done in the same beautiful shade of green marble.

Jill peeked inside, seeing the gold shower head and the drain in the floor. There was a shelf off to one side, wide, obviously intended for sitting. A few bottles sat on the floor by the shelf, shampoo, conditioner, body wash.

A glance in the cabinet beside the sink showed toilet paper, toothpaste, tiny packages of unopened toothbrushes.

Apparently Zhao took good care of his contacts needs.

The bedroom offered a king sized bed, outfitted in a comforter the surprising scarlet of spilled blood. The walls were black, etched at the top with celestial symbols done in tiny silver scrawl.

There was an armoire the wood stained a shiny, high polished black, giving Jill's reflection back at her as she moved toward it.

She set my bags inside it, one holding her pathetic wardrobe which consisted of a few tank tops, several pairs of well worn denim cut offs, underwear, a sweater, starting to fray at the collar and the cuffs, and a single pair of sweat pants.

The second held her prized possession, a Sony laptop computer equipped with state of the art wireless networking.

The third was a duffel, stuffed to bursting with weapons: Knives, ones made for throwing, ones made for stabbing, ones made for cutting the head off a man in close combat. A single gun, a Smith and Wesson Sigma, 9mm luger. A sawed off Remington pump action shotgun. And two tiny garrotes.

Jill laid her arsenal down and turned, moving toward the bed.

A nightstand sat beside it, with an old fashioned phone that currently lay off its cradle. The number for the phone was scrawled in a lazy hand on the pad of paper beside it.

Jill took the tiny gold container from the bag, opening it to the fingernail sized device inside. It was coated in adhesive and stuck easily to the inside of the mouth piece of the phone. She dialed a single number, letting it ring twice before she hung up, waiting for the call back.

It would reroute the signal of the phone line, confusing anyone who was tapping the phone into thinking the call came from a randomly chosen number. It also effectively masked voices, turning male to female, human to devil, blurring the sound to be nothing more then static and gibberish.

The phone rang and she picked it up, giving the code word immediately.

"It sure is hot today."

"It would be better if it was raining."

Chris Redfield had answered her call in less than ten minutes.

"I'm need to know if I'm in trouble."

He was quiet, for a moment, before he answered. "Tell me."

She did, giving him details about the mission and the parameters. About the coup of killing Hidalgo. About the FBC and the power play behind it. And her concern over the two men coming to serve the purpose.

"What would the government want with using this as a coup to kill you, Jill? That's buried with Umbrella exposed. It's done."

"I don't know. I was hoping you could tell me. Has anyone been looking for you?"

Chris took a deep breath before he answered. "Not that I know of. Claire has kept in touch with her contacts here. There hasn't been anything for almost two years."

"Let me ask you something, if I gave you a description, could you tell me if he sounds familiar?" Jill opened the folder, picking up the photograph inside. As if she needed a reminder. As if his face wasn't etched in her memory like a disease.

"I can try."

"If not, I'll scan the picture, upload it to our dump site."

"Sounds good."

Jill opened the laptop, keying in her passcode to access the internet.

She'd had Zhao hook her up with a contact of his, who'd cloned her IP address, bouncing it off several servers to keep it from being tracked. She set the first picture against the portable scanner, gearing the computer up to do its thing while she talked.

"Nice looking, probably mid twenties. Rockin fucking body. Something I can't place clicking for me on him, Red. I wish I could figure out why he's ringing my bell.."

"You need to get laid, kid. Clearly."

"Lech," Jill laughed lightly, "Not that simple." She studied his face and conceded, "But he's fucking gorgeous, no lie there."

"So am I, tootz. So I'm gonna need more than that, doll."

Jill snorted out a laugh.

"Well shut up for a second." Jill set the phone in the crook of her shoulder. "Shaggy hair, kind of a dirty blonde. Eyes that seem to be unable to decide if they want to be blue or gray. Built like a brick shit house. He looks fucking familiar Chris, and I don't know why."

"Okay okay. Don't freak out. Let me log on and check out the pic."

Jill waited, patiently, staring at that handsome face in the photograph. Not a smile, not even close. And yet there were tiny lines around his mouth, winging out from his clear eyes that said he'd smiled a lot once upon a time.

"Jesus Christ."

She dropped the picture, clutching the phone. "What?"

"Hang on for a second." There was a rustling on the other end of the line. Quiet voices speaking, one female. He was talking to Claire.

He came back on the line after a few moments of terse conversation. "Jill?"

"Yeah?"

"That's Leon Kennedy."

"Who?"

"Yeah...yeah...the name won't mean anyhting...not that one. But the one you know? It might."

"Enough games here, Chris. Who is it?"

His sigh was heavy. She felt her heart kick up a tattoo when he answered, "They call him - The Executioner."

Because she knew that name alright. Everyone did...if you lived long enough to repeat it.


	7. Chapter 7

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 7: The Trifecta**

* * *

Chris seemed a little concerned, which, in turn, concerned Jill as well. He reiterated, "Leon Kennedy. Do you remember when I went to save Claire?"

"On Rockfort Island?"

"Yeah."

"So?"

"So before that, when she escaped Raccoon City, she was with a rookie RPD officer. He's the one who let me know where she was because she contacted him on the island. But it's more complicated than that...they were kinda engaged for awhile there."

Jill stared at the photograph on the bed. "Him?"

"Yeah. Leon Kennedy. But there's a problem."

"What?"

"If he's working for USSTRATCOM than he lied to her. Alot. He probably didn't have a choice, given what he does, but usually when you lie to those around you -"

Jill studied that profile, kissed by the light of the sun. "It's because you're a spy."

"Bingo."

"A spy for the government."

"Or an assassin, Jill. I think you should ditch the mission. You have a gut feeling that leading this guy and his partner was bad news. If Kennedy lied to my sister, the woman he claimed to love, who's to say you weren't right? Maybe he's there to find you for USSTRATCOM and finish you off. We can't guarantee that the government is going to back our play here. We've been in hiding since Raccoon and haven't dealt with the big guys in awhile. Maybe they want to locate us and bring us in for questioning."

Jill skimmed a finger down the perfect line of his jaw in the the picture.

The agent had a name now. Leon Kennedy. Her brain queried: Why are you looking for me, Leon Kennedy? And who do you work for? Are you the good guys? The bad guys? Are you here to end Hidalgo...or me?

Jill mused, "It's a pretty elaborate cover up if he's here to kill me, Chris. Barry set this up directly through the FBC."

"You didn't give your name to them, right? THey don't know who the guide is?"

"Nope. Not directly. Just my call sign: Vermillion."

"Then I don't know how he would have found out about you."

"Did you ever mention me to him?"

"No. Never."

"Did Claire?"

He spoke off to the side, Jill waited, and Chris replied, "No. They were engaged so briefly. It was a whirlwind romance for them both. She broke it off to spare him having to lie to her. She suspected he was up to his eyeballs with something, but not this. She's having a rough time with it."

"Can't blame her. Hard to find out you were bumping uglies with an assassin."

"No shit." Chris sounded so cool. Jill could almost TASTE his rage beneath it. God help, Leon Kennedy, Jill mused, you did NOT fuck with Chris' baby sister and come out alive.

Jill replied, "If he's a good guy, here to do just what they said, he's on our side Chris. There's no killing him for you. You hear me?"

"...I hear you."

"Good. Tell Claire I'll find out how deep he's in it, ok? And not to worry until we know."

There was a rustle of sound and Claire came on the line, "Jill?"

"Yep?"

"Take care of him, ok? Please?"

"I will."

The line rustled again and Chris came back on, "I don't like this, Jill. I think you should abandon the damn mission and let Barry send someone else."

"Why? I've been here undercover for months trying to get all I need on Hidalgo. I'm not running now. I can handle one pretty agent and whoever else."

"You don't even know what he really wants, Jill. Is it worth it?"

Jill frowned, preparing to hang up the phone. "Okay. Well he's on his way here. Two days, tops, he should be showing up. I'll find out then."

"Jesus Christ, Jill. Get out of there. You don't even know if he's alone, or what he wants."

"Can't. Gotta know."

"Jill-"

"I won't be checking in for awhile. Tell Claire I said thanks."

Jill hung up, not giving him a chance to answer.

Leon Kennedy.

Ex-rookie police officer, Leon Kennedy.

She tilted her head, studying his face, "What secrets do you keep, Mr. Kennedy? And where have we met before?"

She laid down on the smooth bed, studying that picture, trying to figure out why Leon Kennedy's face was haunting her.

* * *

There was steam wafting under the bathroom door.

Tracking the guide here was child's play. He'd located the safehouse with little more than a few well rubbed elbows in the right places outside of Jakarta. Finding his guide was easier than finding a wolf among dogs. He could track a fart on a foggy day, he could find anything.

The wafting steam beneath the door told him they were showering.

He considered waiting for the door to open to be sure, but instead he simply kicked it in and instructed, "The lock on the front door is cheap and ineffective. A child could kick it down and kill you where you stand."

Of course, the joke was on him - because the shower was empty.

He started to turn and the barrel of the gun pressed to his spine. "It's a good thing I was expecting trouble than, I guess."

The voice gave him pause. Leon lifted his hands, open palmed, beside his head, "Not armed. I'm scheduled to meet you here. I'm your charge."

"I know who you are," Said the voice, "And I know you're a liar. You've got a knife bigger than my forearm strapped down the front of that vest." Her fingers jerked at his waistband and tugged the pistol tucked there beneath his shirt free. She tossed it away down the hallway with a clatter of sound, "Not armed, my ass."

He almost smirked, surprised to find her amusing, and she instructed, "Pull the knife, slowly, and toss it into the bathroom."

He cocked his head a little, "Are we enemies?"

She jabbed him in the back hard enough to hurt with the gun, "We will be, if you get cute. Now, please."

Leon spilled the knife into his hand effortlessly and informed her, "I could kill you before you pull that trigger, just so you know."

The hammer dropped on the gun she held and her voice was soft and deadly, "No, you couldn't. Trust me. You aren't that good."

She clearly didn't know who she was dealing with here. He started to open his mouth and retort and she kicked him in the back of the knee. It surprised him enough that she stumbled and she smacked his wrist to knock his knife out of his grip. It clinked musically as it hit the floor and spun off to slap against the tub.

Sadly for her, she'd blown her advantage - she wasn't going to kill him, not really, so the gun was useless. She drove back to kick him again and he turned his body into the pistol, forcing her to jam it into his vest as he did. She grunted as he swept his arm down and knocked hers aside. Her leg shifted to kick him, he shin blocked her, and gripped her wrist to jerk her arm up and out.

Hyper-extended, she lost her edge, even as he put his boot to the back of her knee and jerked the pistol from her hands at the same time. She let him take it, went to one knee to avoid losing her knee completely, and caught him at the hips. Admittedly, she was fast. She used his body to flip up, roll over him, and lock arms in a throw that sent him rolling down the hallway.

He came out of it already aiming and she kicked him in the hip, threw him against the wall, and put his own knife to his throat in a crossbar.

They were both breathing fast and hard with her pistol pressed into her belly and his knife to his own throat.

He said, calmly, if breathlessly, "I didn't come here to hurt you."

And she whispered, "Really? That's what you do... _Executioner."_

Ah. He started to answer that stupid name when the bathroom door spilled light down the hallway onto her face. Something made his blood pound in his ears as he answered, "I'm just Kennedy. Leon Kennedy."

This close, she could really see his face. Her brain shivered with memory.

The knife at his throat relaxed a little and she breathed, "...holy shit...like JFK?"

She suddenly realized why he haunted her.

He glanced down and couldn't see the gun he had pressed against her belly because of the perfect press of her breasts against his chest in the little tank top she was barely wearing. The ponytail left her face naked and perfect, naked and beautiful, naked and taunting.

Why?

It was  _her_.

He wasn't a man given to coincidence but what was the likelihood of finding her here?  _Her_? The woman in his dreams was Jill Valentine - Raccoon City survivor, fellow playmate of White's Circle of Hell.

How much more coincidental could the world get?

He breathed, "...cut me or let me go."

She returned, "Shoot me or drop the gun."

"You didn't die in the  _The Cage_."

Jill shivered, shaking her head at the memory of it. "I don't die easy. He didn't break you."

Leon's voice was whisper quiet, "I don't break."

Her hand trembled on the knife. "Ever?"

"Ever."

A breath of a moment that shimmered and she murmured, "I could break you."

Lord.

Someone's heart was beating a sharp tattoo. It didn't really matter whose. The danger flashed bright and painful around them. Leon finally spoke, into the electric silence, "Try me."

"Drop the gun." She nearly choked on the words.

But he dropped the gun. Just like that. No more stand off. No more power play. He dropped it to the floor with a thump.

He watched her face, a coiled snake prepared to strike, "Your move."

She pressed the knife against his carotid, tenderly, softly, almost sweetly. She watched the butterfly beat of his heart there beneath the delicate skin and knew, just as she knew he'd likely win if they went hand to hand, that he'd get her killed if she didn't do it first. She should put this knife into his throat and end him.

But she couldn't. She didn't want to. Executioner or not - something in her guts told her he was a good guy; a good guy in a bad guy shell. Her instincts were honed and nearly perfect. She never went against them.

Jill only trust herself implicitly. It was how she stayed alive.

She dropped the knife the floor with a clatter.

* * *

**Day 54**

* * *

He was fairly sure he was incapable of any kind of real pleasure. He was pretty sure he was almost numb. He started to drive the knife into the ribs of the man pressed to the wall and froze. He froze.

Standing at the edge of the rise, near the top of the ring, she was the only face in the darkness.

He'd been killing his opponents - sometimes brutally. He'd been rising through the ranks like a shark, scenting blood, to devour those who stood between him and victory. He was descending into the madness with a venegance. He was  _good._ He was  _the best they'd ever seen._

He was dying here.

The man in his grip bubbled blood from his lips from his fractured sternum. He should end him with a merciful thrust of the knife into his chest.

The girl on the rise shook her head as if she'd heard his thoughts. He dropped the man in a rush of sound and she turned, backing up two steps. She turned, shaking her head - and ran.

Through the tunnel, he raced like he was possessed. He raced, with his heart beating painfully in his chest, as if he'd arrest and die there in the mud. He could feel. He could feel it all. All of it. Everything. He could  _ **FEEL...her.**_

But he couldn't find her.

She was gone.

And he was still alive.

He was still Leon Kennedy.

* * *

The knife hit the ground with a metallic clank.

Jill let removed her crossbar of an arm that was pressed against his collarbone, effectively pinning him to the wall. She started to back off and he shifted, making her gasp. She let him push her against the other wall. She let him pin her there with his hands on her upper arms.

The pictures over her head rattled with the movement as he didn't pull it. Her back hit the wall and stole her breath.

He breathed, "My heart is pounding."

His voice. He sounded so surprised. He sounded impressed. She tilted her head to scan his face. She'd heard that, about him, that he was dead inside. She'd heard the stories. She'd heard the tall tales and the rumors. She'd heard.

She hadn't believed.

His voice echoed tremulously around them. He reached down to grip her wrist, almost roughly, and shoved her hand against his chest under the vest.

And she could feel the thunder of his heart.

Jill whispered, "That doesn't happen?"

"...no." He watched her face as if she were the only thing he could see, as if he were blind to the rest of the world. "Ever."

"Never?"

He shook his head, "...never."

Hers echoed his. It nearly burst out of her chest with its eager pounding. Jill reached her hand up and gripped his other hand, shoving it against her chest. He didn't grope, didn't take, didn't taunt - he just pressed his palm against the thump of her life force and trembled.

Jill whispered, "...mine either."

That's what The Cage did to you. It took away your ability to feel much of anything. It made you empty...until it brought you back.

Leon only knew that he wanted to feel her, touch her, press their chests together and share the echo of those pounding beats. He wanted to bury himself between her thighs and find himself again. He wanted, desperately, to drown in whatever power this was that she wielded and wove around them both.

And so he murmured, "Unhook my vest, Jill. Two straps. Each side...please."

Her hands lowered, scrambling almost, to follow that request. She caught the first in her left hand, desperate to touch more of him, and the door rattled.

They both froze, racing hearts the only sound in the quiet darkness.

The door rattled again.

Someone was trying to break in...and they weren't being subtle about it.

Leon let go first, dropping to grab the knife from the floor. Jill snatched the gun and the door burst open, the night breeze escorting in the enormous form of their third - Jack Krauser.

He caught one look at them in fighting stances and lifted his hands, open palmed, harmless...as if he'd ever really be that.

"What? Too late to join the party? Drop the knife, Kennedy, and close your mouth. You look like you should be on your knees in prison waiting for some deep throat action."

Leon thought:  _still a fucking asshole, Jack._ But he lowered the knife and put a hand on Jill's wrists to have her do the same.

Meanwhile, Jack was giving Jill a look that made her blood cold. He was also picking his teeth with an enormous machete. "Hello there, sweetheart, you look cold in that top. Maybe a hug will warm you up." He opened his arms, "Anytime you're ready."

Jill rolled her eyes and turned away, moving down the hallway. "Now that you're both here, shower and get some rest. We'll move at first light."

Krauser shrugged and carried his small assault bag into the one bedroom, "Dibs. Though it looks lonely. You wanna join me, sweetcheeks?"

She could argue she'd been sleeping in there, but she didn't want to bother with it. He could have the damn bedroom.

Jill ignored him and moved to the far side of the hallway. She added, "First light - bring only what you need to survive. Leave anything that allows you to be tracked. You hear me? Anything."

She claimed the narrow little couch in the living room, rolling to her side to face the door.

Leon disappeared into the bathroom to shower and Jill dozed off listening to the sound of running water. What had been about to happen between them? What?

She didn't know...but she kinda knew. She'd have taken his clothes and touched him. Would Krauser have come upon them in _flagrante delicto?_

She couldn't really answer that question because it wouldn't have gotten that far. Surely. Surely not.

The bathroom door opened and Leon emerged in a puff of steam. Jill tensed and forced herself to relax. He moved to the side of the living room and paused, glancing down at the sleeping bag she'd laid out on the floor. Through slitted eyes, feigning sleep, she watched the twitch of a smile on his mouth before he turned.

He was shirtless. A little pendant of some kind swung at chest level on him but she couldn't see the design. The moonlight skimmed his back as he knelt and dug something out of his dirty vest.

It showed the scars on his back in sharp relief. He was a mess. The roping mess of them gave her pause and nearly made her gasp in sympathy.

His chest was a masterpiece carved by angels - his back a nightmare melted in the fires of hell.

Jill stopped pretending she wasn't looking at him and began to openly stare.

She'd known he'd survived things since Raccoon City, but she'd never guessed it was that awful. It looked like whip marks, burn scars, mounds of scar tissue like beads down the flesh near the left hip that told her shock rod. He was a melted ruin.

She wondered if he ever really walked around shirtless.

Quietly, she finally spoke, "...so much pain. How do you stand it?"

He didn't even tense, didn't flinch, telling her he'd known the whole time she was watching at him. He spoke, low and grumbling, "Pain can be controlled. You just learn to redirect it."

She knew the answer. Hadn't it been hammered at them? But she wanted  _his_ answer.

"How?"

He turned to look at her in the dark. His hair fell over his brow, covering the silver of his eyes, "Ignore it. Eventually, you go numb."

They were whispering. Why? She didn't know, but it felt right. "I can't. It's my greatest weakness."

They held eyes for a moment and she added, "What's yours?"

For a handful of seconds, she didn't think he'd answer. Finally, he stuck the cigarette in his hand between his lips and struck the match, rising from the ground to move to the open window.

Jill pursed her lips, watching his back in the ragged moonlight. He wasn't a man who shared, she knew that. She wasn't either. It's how they stayed alive. What was it about him that made her want to know him? To share things about herself? Shared experience? Shared survival?

Something.

She closed her eyes to try to sleep and he finally answered, surprising her, "...regret."

Her heart shivered. "About what?"

That part he didn't answer. He just continued to stare into the dark like the truth was out there. What was his truth? Whatever it was, it was laden with regret.

She wanted to touch his scars and feel his strength.

Instead, she kept her hands to herself.

And she fell asleep watching him smoke away his greatest weakness.


	8. Chapter 8

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 7: The Village**

* * *

**Day 99**

* * *

He tracked the smell of him like an animal. It brought the beat of his heart in a tattoo of relentless hunger.

The rock wall collapsed in a clatter of stone as the man went first down and Leon came behind, skidding as he landed, running where he fell. They cut across the narrow ledge above the waterfall - predator, and prey. The rushing scent of river slew the nostrils and lit the senses.

Splattered by the water as it ran, Leon saw the moment his opponent stumbled. The man staggered, he went down on his side grabbing his ankle. He spun onto his back and lifted the pistol in his hands.

They stared down the ends of their guns at each other's face.

The man's - a mask of fear and desperation.

Leon's - determination and surrender.

The man gasped, crying, "Please...it doesn't have to end this way. Please. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't want it. I just wanted to be a good cop. A good cop. Not a fucking monster."

A shiver of regret edged through the emptiness, echoing into the night air.

Leon shook his head, "It doesn't matter anymore."

The man wept, copiously, "I don't want to kill you! Why do you want to kill me!? I never killed anyone! I never did anything wrong!"

And Leon answered, "I don't care."

The guns echoed into the rushing night.

* * *

He woke up with the echo of that gunshot in his ears. It had freed him from the island...and cost him the final piece of his soul.

His watch told him he'd been asleep for three hours. Three. A solid number on a good day. He rose and hesitated, watching the woman on the couch.

Testing a theory, Leon shifted toward her.

Her dark hair looked silver in the moonlight.

His fingers shifted and settled over the pulse in her wrist. Steady. Slow. Relaxed. A comfortable sixty-six beats per minute. A runner's resting heart rate.

She murmured in her sleep and her legs slid down the couch. He watched them, and the curve of her ass above them as she rolled to her back on the couch. Her left leg braced against the side of the couch, her right settling to the floor. The little shorts gaped at the leg, offering darkness above them and the promise of things that could kill a man.

He was betting Jill Valentine was the type of woman a man died for.

The little tank top crept up her flat belly. Her breasts rose and fell with each easy breath. It was cool enough in the room that her nipples peaked while she slept.

It was a curious thing to want to touch her. It was something he hadn't felt in a long time. He watched the pulse in her throat for a moment and envisioned his face between her thighs.

And that was curious for him too. He was a man who understood the needs of his body. He gave it what it needed. A willing woman was easy enough to find when he wanted release.

But this...wasn't that. That was simply biology. It was inherent. It was animal in nature. This...wasn't that.

Because he wanted to curl his hand around the back of her neck and draw her up to his mouth to kiss her...and he never did that at all.

Leon helped himself to another cigarette and emerged onto the porch of the little house to smoke it. The sky was the color so often confused with black - midnight blue. It was the shade somewhere lost between the silver of the moon and the eternal blackness that means lack of light. It was poised to spill into a new day. He could almost smell the sun on the horizon.

The air echoed with humidity and his internal barometer told him it was going to be a blistering day slogging through the jungle. His lungs protested the burst of nicotine and tobacco on the acrid smoke he inhaled. A vice, a stupid one - almost as dumb as the flash tucked into his vest filled with whiskey. Another vice, the kind that got you killed.

Even a robot had vices it seemed.

He turned back into the house to brush his teeth and start gathering what he needed for the day.

And even a robot had feelings.

His heart stopped at the sight of Jack Krauser standing over Jill where she lay on the couch, much like he had done, but there was no thoughtless emotion on Jack Krauser. There was no internal struggle with feelings. There was just a predator.

He looked at Jill like she was something he wanted to eat - and kill afterward.

Leon waited until Krauser put a hand out as if he'd touch her, and he stepped into the house, "Jack."

Krauser paused, turning toward him, a wicked grin on his face. "She's fuckable, right? God, those tits. I could bury my face in them."

Leon arched a brow, shifting to grab his shirt from the floor. "She's our guide. Keep your hands to yourself."

"Why? She looks like the type who screams when she cums. I bet she'd fight me off at first and then beg for it."

There were some types of men in the world that needed put down like a rabid dog. Krauser was one of them. He'd subscribed to the male archetype of an alpha dog without being asked twice. What he didn't have, he took, conquering anyone who got in his path. You had to set clearly defined boundaries for a man like Jack Krauser.

Leon did so, quietly, "She's off limits. Do you understand me?"

Jack had knelt beside the couch and seemed to be considering touching her thighs. He rolled his neck to look at Leon in the moonlight, "You her great protector, Kennedy? I'll wipe the fucking floor with you."

There was a soft shift of sound and Jill pressed the small dagger in her hand to Jack's carotid, speaking smoothly, "I don't need him to protect me from you. You're too stupid to live. You touch me, I'll chop your goddamn hands off."

Jack backed off, chuckling happily, "Ease down, girl, damn. Can't blame a guy for tryin. You walk around wearing shit like that and you don't think a guy's gonna try to touch?"

Jill rolled a foot into his chest and pushed, sending him backward on his butt. "You sound like a rapist, Jack. The worst kind. You sayin I had it comin?"

Jack shrugged, winking at her, "I'm saying you dress like a whore, you get treated like one."

She started to lunge at him and Leon caught her around the waist, lifting her away to set her on the floor behind him. Jill gave him a snarl and he soothed, quietly, "Please. We have a job to do."

He wasn't there when she woke.

She was fairly certain he'd probably never slept. Did he even need to? The stories about him said he never stopped, never slept, and never left a job unfinished.

And he was professional. In his bones. He was asking her to be the same here.

Jill finally nodded, and added, "Fine. But he touches me, he draws back a nub."

"Agreed." Leon nodded, scanning her face, "He touches you, I'll hold him down while you make him a eunuch."

Jack snorted and rose, heading toward the bedroom. "Right. Big tits Magee and the crying kid from  _Titanic_...I'm real scared. Seriously." He paused and leered at Leon, winking, "Although we both know I wasn't the only one thinking about touching. Was I, tough guy?"

He went off to gather his things and Leon shook his head, turning aside to do the same. After a moment, Jill finally remarked, "We both know I'm eventually going to kill that guy, right?"

Leon nodded, scooping on a fresh fitted black shirt. He paired it camouflage fatigues that hung loosely at his hips until he buttoned them. "Just wait until the mission is over. I'll let you."

Jill hesitated and finally gathered her clothing to shift into the bathroom and change. She paused, hated having to ask, but did anyway. "Can you..."

Leon nodded, "I'll watch the door."

"Thank you."

Jill emerged in jungle green camouflage with her hair scooped back in a ponytail and topped by a hat. She strapped on a pack with the gear she'd need. There was no more talking as the trio set out across the small dirt road toward the jungle.

The bad news was that they wouldn't get far.

The jungle itself wasn't the threat, it was what lurked within the confines of those rolling branches. Beneath the canopy of curious green, the infection had spread in waves of disease. It settled and sparked and grew, igniting a series of horrendous mutations that waited to greet them.

Curious, Jack Krauser was the first to break their silence as they moved, "Convince me that B.O.W.S. are real."

Leon arched a brow, his hair catching the coming dawn and turning a blazing red gold. "I don't have to. They are. You don't have to believe in them to make them that way."

Krauser snorted. "Bio-organic weapons. Ridiculous. If Umbrella had that kind of power, why are they kaput?"

Jill glanced at him like he was stupid, picking her way over a fallen tree trunk. "Because they were stupid. Power doesn't make you smart, Jack. It doesn't make you cover your tracks."

Krauser glanced at Jill's ass in her fatigues as she moved. "Hmm...but it gets you what you want."

She shrugged, sipping from her canteen. "Maybe. But at what price?"

Krauser glanced at Leon who was watching him in the humid fog. They held gazes. Krauser gestured to Jill and licked his lips using his fist to demonstrate taking her ponytail to force her face down on his lap, but he calmly replied, "Shit. Who cares? Power always costs something. Who gives a shit what the price is when you're on top of the world?" He pantomimed smacking her ass while she bent over to check tracks in the mud.

Leon rolled his eyes and turned away, following Jill across the jungle. Krauser snorted again and took up the rear of the trio.

Jill replied, "That's a dead man's answer, Krauser." She shifted off the path they were on into the heavy jungle. The men followed her as they began to pick through the dense foliage.

The rainforest was beautiful - there was no getting around that. As the sun peeked over the clouds, it tried its best to reach them on the rich forest flood, but without hope. The canopy above simply didn't allow it in more than small dappled patches of light. It struck the humid air and sparked prettily, casting rainbows around where it refracted.

The sounds were like music on their own. It was tree frogs and bird calls, it was water in the distance near the falls and the trickle of a stream nearby. It was the shiver of the humid breeze on their sweaty flesh as they walked.

Krauser muttered, "I hate this forest shit. Why is it three thousand degrees out here? There's literally no sun down here. I don't get it."

Even if he didn't mean it anyway but rhetorically, Leon answered, "The humidity makes things grow. Nearly half the worlds population of plants and animals live in the rain forest."

Krauser snorted, "Billy-Fucking-Nye the Science Guy over here. Tell me more, Revenge of the Nerds."

Leon shrugged, and replied, "The rain forest is made up of four layers: emergent, upper canopy, understory, and forest floor. Emergent trees grow far apart and tall, their branches reaching above the canopy. The upper canopy houses most of the rain forest's animal species and forms a roof that blocks most light from reaching below it. The understory usually shaded and home to bushes and shrubs as well as the branches of canopy trees. The forest floor is in complete shade, meaning there is little likelihood of plants growing there and making it easy to walk through the forest. "

Krauser gave him a narrow look, "...what a queer."

Jill smirked, casting a look at Leon as they walked. He felt it and arched a brow, "What?"

She laughed, hiking her pack up on her back, "Who knows that kinda stuff?"

Leon shrugged, "I like to read."

Jill shook her head, turning them toward the stream. "What? National Geographic?"

"Sometimes," He paused to let her scan her map, "Is that a bad thing?"

Krauser's shoulder bumped him, causing Leon to stumble, "Nope. For a fucking dork." He burped the word "NERDS" and shambled a little past them into the water, bearing north.

Jill rolled her eyes, watching him. "I guess he feels like he doesn't need to follow my lead."

Leon actually laughed a little, "His internal asshole compass is guiding him to his own kind."

A handful of moments passed before he turned his head back to see her staring at him, owl-eyed. "...what?"

"I didn't know you could laugh. The Executioner has a funny bone."

Deadpan, he replied, "There are two hundred six bones in the adult human body...one of them was bound to have a sense of humor."

He started forward with Jill beside him. She smirked, chuckled, and shook her head, "The adult human body?"

"Sure. We have two hundred and seventy at birth."

Jill made a sound of surprised, "Really? What the hell happens to them?"

He laughed again and it made something in her belly relax. It was a good sound. It meant he was in there, whoever he'd been, under that crunchy shell he wore.

"Babies start out with all those bones and some fuse to one another during growth. At birth, for instance, the plate-like skull bones can move against one another and shift the head's shape to facilitate delivery. Then as a normal occurrence, the interdigitations between the skull bones gradually become rigid and may eventually fuse to one another to fully protect the brain. Also, certain bones in the wrist and ankle that usually remain separate sometimes make themselves one with a neighbor despite the rules."

She paused, watching him. He was ten steps ahead before he turned back to look at her. "You ok?"

She shook her head, moving to catch up to him again. "Who are you?" It was queried on a laugh as she ranged herself at his side. "Who knows stuff like that? Seriously."

Leon shrugged again, shifting through the pretty foliage. "I was always smart. Even in elementary school. Which was never really all that exciting to anyone but my father. The smarter I got, the more I think he felt like I was going to become President or something."

She wasn't entirely sure, but this open conversation from him felt special. She got the distinct feeling he just didn't share much with anyone in his life. Jill nodded, pausing to pick a handful of mushrooms and put them in a small bag in her pack. "I can imagine he did. How'd you end up a cop?"

Leon paused, glancing at his watch. "...bad luck. I didn't want to be a nerd. So I decided to be a hero."

Jill paused, tilting her head, "How'd that work out for ya?"

He tossed his hair and winked, "Jury's still out."

The wink seemed to throw him off his own guard. He jerked a little, shook his head, and turned back toward the forest. "Sorry. What is this? Social hour? I apologize."

Jill shook her head, leading them through a narrow overhang of branches. Krauser was lost in the woods somewhere, like an idiot. Part of them both were hoping he wasn't coming back.

"Why? Gotta pass the time somehow. You'd rather fight Krauser instead?"

He laughed and held up a jagged branch so she could duck under, "Not exactly. But what can you tell me about Javier Hidalgo?"

"He's the kingpin down here. Amparo is filled with his goons. There's some speculation lately that he's dealing in human trafficking."

Leon nodded, scanning the jungle with his binoculars. "Missing women?"

"At least fifty so far. Maybe more. It's an epidemic. We just can't figure out why."

You could just glimpse the village through the binoculars. He could see the bobbling form of Jack's head as he moved. Leon nodded again, sliding down the small embankment.

Without thinking, he put a hand out to Jill to help her down. She took it, sliding easily. But she wasn't the type to need to prove herself to a man. Taking the hand cost her nothing.

She, again, got the feeling he wasn't usually the type to offer.

Leon speculated, "B.O.W. experimentation?"

"That'd be my guess. Why else do you think you're here?"

He nodded, tugging his pistol as they approached the perimeter of the town. Why? He wasn't sure why. There was nothing that screamed danger. There was nothing that blatantly shouted, "RUN!"

But there was the hair on the back of his neck telling him to stay armed.

Jill echoed it and they both noticed Krauser had his gun out as well.

Yeah. Instinct.

All three of them had been bred to recognize subliminal threats.

The town was run down; a third world. Leon studied it with a sympathetic and discerning eye.

A cool breeze blew gently from East, bathing his sweaty face with relief. It was still hot here, still cloying with humidity but there was the promise of rain on the wind.

Above him, the treetops bustled in the breeze, the leaves rustling as if speaking their own language to each other. Somewhere in the distance, a bird cawed loudly. There were the sounds of nature all around him. It was all cover for the evil that lurked inside that village.

How did he know? He could feel it in his fucking bones.

The roads here were little more than runnels cut deep into the earth. The red clay was ripped from the bosom of the earth like gaping wounds to form a path barely big enough to allow a single car to pass. A few ragtag huts decorated the sides of the road and none were bigger than several hundred feet wide. Some had roofs that were sagging and filled with holes. Some were patched with twigs and leaves to stop the rains when they came. This close to the Equator they had to have some pretty fantastic tropical storms.

There appeared to be some attempt at commerce in the village. There were open-air fruit and vegetable stands with burlap sacks filled with dry good and fresh fruit. As they crossed by one, the smell pushed on the wind - cloying and sweetly acidic.

Not fresh fruit - overly ripe, ruined, rotting in the coming sun.

Someone had left their wares out in the sun to spoil.

Who did that?

Someone was already dead.

There was a movement from the alleyway beside one of the red brick buildings. A man stumbled forward. He staggered, putting his face in his hands. He groaned.

Krauser called, "You? Hey...what's with you?"

And Leon added, "Jack - don't!"

Krauser grabbed the man's dirty shirt and the sombrero he wore tilted, spilled off his head, and left his skull naked to the dawning day. The ugly straw took skin and hair with it, sloughing it off with a plop and squelch of rotted flesh. The smell was instant, classic, and terrifying.

Death. You never forgot what necrotic flesh smelled like.

The man lunged with his mouth open and filled with blackened teeth. He dived for Krauser's throat on a snarl of hunger. Leon shouted, "Jack! Push him away!"

And Krauser did, sharply. There was the boom of a gun - and Jill put down the man with a clean shot to the temple. Blood blew up in a curving arc of congealed matter. It was the consistency of jello. It splatted instead of splattered.

Krauser shouted, "Fucking sick!" And tossed the body to the dirt. He kicked it twice when it was down. "What is that shit?!"

Leon started to answer and there was the familiar sound of shuffling. There was the unforgettable noise of moaning. There were the stumble and slap of feet in pursuit.

Jill whispered, "This way. Hurry."

And they cut left down an alley. Krauser paced them, running backward, and saw the first of the hoard turn the corner toward them.

"What in the hell!? Are they dead?!"

Leon called back, racing after Jill, "They're zombies, Krauser. But they're not like the zombies in Raccoon City."

Jill shook her head, leaping over a low row of boxes. Leon hefted himself up after her with Krauser in the rear. She called back, running across the wide open plaza in the center of town. "They're too fast. There's too many."

And they were climbing the boxes now. Climbing over them in pursuit.

He'd never seen zombies climb.

These were  _smarter_  than T-Virus zombies. How? What had infected them?

They were halfway across the plaza when the shadows of the day elongated. The sun finally broke across the world in a spill of gold and light. The sky sent the dark screaming back from whence she came...and showed all the zombies that waited in the alleys beneath her.

The village wasn't just infected.

The village was overrun.

It was lost.

Amparo was the village of the damned.


	9. Chapter 9

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 9: The Girl in the Dress**

* * *

**Raccoon City, 1998**

* * *

"Please..." The woman was curled over the body of her dying son. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Her bloody hands kept lifting toward him, "Officer...help me. Please."

But the boy was missing half of his throat. What could he do?

Leon, hands shaking, offered her his left one, "He's gone, ma'am. Come with me. Ok? I'll protect you."

The woman gave him a look of lost hope, "From what? I've already lost everything. Please...just leave me alone with him now. Ok? Please."

The sound of pursuit was coming. He hesitated, hating to leave her, "Ma'am, if you come with me...I know it seems so hopeless. I know it's awful...but you're still alive. Right? There's a reason. Let me protect you. I'll get you to safety."

She gave him a sad shake of her head, "Officer...there's no safety anywhere anymore. Don't you realize? We're already dead."

The zombies spilled over the big dumpster, moaning, and coming for them. He tried once more, "Please! Ma'am... _please!"_

And she finished, "Go. Run. Hurry. But it won't matter. You can't outrun death."

So he left her. He left her and ran. He left her behind to hold off the hoard that paused in their pursuit of him to eat her. He was too afraid to stay, too afraid to die, so he left her behind to save his own life.

And damned himself.

* * *

 **Outside Amparo**  -  **2002**

* * *

The long run took them through streets lined with bodies and flecked in blood. They leaped over a fence and kept going. The small village opened to a waterway with shabbily assembled docks in a cheap, rotting wood. The little houses lining the walkways were open air with thatched rooves and mud sealed stone. The smell of stagnant water filled the nostrils in a nearly cloying way, burning with each breath as they ran.

The sounds of pursuit chased them across the boards with the rapid stomp and slap of boots on wood. They could run all they wanted, Leon thought desperately, but you couldn't outrun death. It filled the fetid summer sunshine with the scent of long bloated corpses on a humid day. As they ran, Leon noted that Jill was sporting a slash over her upper arm.

At the edge of the dock, a broken walkway waited to forestall their escape.

Krauser called, "Who the fuck broke the damn walk?"

Leon and Jill didn't bother to bitch about it, they just turned right and ran for the house at the side. The water beneath them was brown and muddy, showing lumpy clumps of old clay that had been kicked up from the countless bodies dumped in its depths. Hands grabbed for Jill as she leaped through the narrow window and Leon spun a back kick to send their aggressors scrambling and falling.

Krauser hit the door and slammed it shut as Leon rolled through the window where Jill had gone.

There was a single way out - the back wall of the house had collapsed and a makeshift concoction of boards haphazardly tossed together offered the only escape. They ran for it, slapping along as the zombies failed to get in after them - faster, sure, but still stupid. No higher cognitive function to tell them to open the door.

As they burst out onto the walkway, Krauser was the first man down the shabby boards. His heavy muscled form shook them like an Earthquake and Jill stumbled, nearly went into the water, before Leon grabbed her arm to throw her forward again. Grateful, she returned the favor by picking off a zombie trying to grab his ankles from the water.

They hung left at the only turn and moved toward another collapsing house. Krauser paused as they rushed past and kicked hard at the boards there. It collapsed the walkway they'd come from and spilled countless pursuers into the water to sink. Impressed, Jill gave him a narrow look.

He arc _h_ ed his brows and commented, "What? Not just a pretty face, sweetheart."

With an eye roll, Jill hurried into the house. Leon was already on his knees beside the man leaning against the shattered wall. He was bleeding profusely from his stomach as he gasped, "The girl...the  _girl..._ she brought the monsters to this town...I helped her escape...I tried to hel-" He groaned in pain and Jill hurried over to stab him in the outer thigh with morphine. The pain killer worked as he refocused on Leon and added, "I helped her escape,  _amigo._ I tried. But she...she was...she damned us all."

Leon pressed on the gushing stomach above the other man's hands and urged, "From where?"

And the man gasped, blood pouring from his mouth, "Javier's mansion..."

He went still.

He stopped breathing.

Leon rose and Krauser remarked, "So Javier is keeping those missing girls there. Why?"

Leon answered, "There's talk that Javier was trafficking human organs as well. My guess? He harvests them there."

"Jesus," Jill gestured, "Either way...we can't stay here. There are usually boats kept at the church. Let's get there and get away from this village."

They fell into step again beside her as the water rippled beside the body of the man. It tossed and something snaked free in a swirling ugly silver tongue to grip his leg and jerk him into the water. Jill shouted. Krauser fired blindly into the water.

And a hunter leaped free of the swirling depths.

But not the kind she'd faced in the Spencer Mansion. It was amphibian. It had padded fingers for climbing walls. It looped a tongue around Krauser's leg and jerked. The big man went down, yelling. Leon fired into the frog as it leaped, and it whipped Krauser upward toward the ceiling.

Jill unloaded the machine gun on it as it tried to run. Blood splattered. Krauser roared in rage, arched his body, and drove his big knife into its ugly face. It dropped him. The walkway nearly collapsed, and Leon grabbed his big arm to jerk him to his feet.

They didn't wait to watch the hunter drop off the ceiling, they just ran.

A pack of zombies ended up splitting them apart at a rotten collapsed house. Jill and Krauser went left down a long walkway; Leon right over a saturated roof. He raced across the sagging hay, hurrying toward the narrow tunnel in the distance that would lead them to the church. He could hear Jill and Krauser fighting as they moved.

He heard her shout and the grunt of Krauser fighting back.

He had to hope that Jack wouldn't do anything stupid while they were fighting for their lives. He might be a lecherous shit, but he wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't risk his life for a piece of ass.

Leon kicked from the hip as a hunter leaped up onto the walkway he was running across. He shoulder shoved it into the water, fired once from the hip into its face, and watched it fall back into the ugly water. The long race brought them together again as they hit the tunnel.

The immediate relief at the sun leaving them was startling. It was almost cold in the cave where they found themselves.

The church was in relatively decent shape compared to its predecessors. Light hip the outcropping of rock above it and offered a speckled view of heavy sandstone and lime. As they hit the white doors and emerged inside, a surreal fog spilled around them.

And a girl in a soft white dress sat on a stone near a shattered floor to sing.

There was nothing you could do but freeze and stare. It made no sense. Her pretty dulcet tones filled the room in a song that soothed even as it caressed the ears. They all just kept standing there with guns raised.

The girl was gorgeous. She limpid seafoam eyes and long dark hair gathered in small braids beside her copper skin. Slim, tall, she was young enough that Jill wanted to guess she was a teenager but not an adult. She glanced at them and smiled as she sang.

You were so busy watching her in the dappled sunlight, that you, at first, failed to notice the thing in the water beside her listening. It was a monster. It was a pair of glowing eyes in a transparent head. It looked small as sit floated, rapturously watching her. It was slimy and happy, gazing at her with abject adoration.

The girl paused in her singing, shaking where she sat, and finally fell to her side on the floor.

The thing in the water turned toward them. They all got their guns up.

And it came out of the water in a burst of rage.

It wasn't small. It was enormous. It rose out of the water with jagged hooks beneath a wide open mouth filled with a thousand teeth. It had tentacles in shimmering silver that whipped and slapped and smacked the walls as it ran toward them over the rotting floor.

They fired and scattered and shouted. They ducked and rolled and reversed. It had squat little legs holding up a big fat belly and toes like the hooves of a goat. Cloven feet chose a target and pursued.

Jill caught the first tentacle in the side. It knocked her over the floor and sent her toward the water. She went under, Krauser caught a tentacle to start hacking away at it, and Leon used the momentum to mount the damn thing at a run. He clamored up it, Jill popped distracted it with gunfire, and Leon thrust his heavy knife into the weird transparent head, digging toward those glowing eyes.

It roared. It tossed its head to free itself, but Leon used his knife as a handle and just hung on. Krauser headed toward the fat belly to stab it while he yelled. Jill kept on firing into the meat of it. Blood sprayed everywhere.

A tentacle looped around Leon's throat and jerked. His knife came with him as he was ripped free and thrown away. He flew, he curled his body around himself for protection, he hit the rotting wall of the church and went right on through. It collapsed around him in a clatter of tumbling dry stone. He rolled across the walkway and skidded out on his side.

A pair of soft hands touched his face and he was looking up into the face of the girl who'd passed out on the floor after singing.

There was a rumble as the heavy tower of the church collapsed outward. It narrowly missed the monster that leaped back into the water and was gone. In the quiet, the girl told him, " _Te protegeré. Soy Manuela_."

Touched, Leon returned, " _Gracias. Me llamo Leon."_

She smiled and answered, "You are American. Come with me, Leon. There are things you should see."

She offered him a hand up as they rose together. She was so calm. A beautiful girl with such an angelic feel to her. How old was she? Fifteen? Sixteen? Something like that. He was sure she wasn't an adult. Other than that, it was a guess.

Jill and Krauser emerged into the church. The girl greeted them with a soft smile. Jill was bleeding badly from her arm as she walked. Krauser was picking his teeth with the blade of his knife. He tilted his head at Manuela, "Well...the day is looking up after all. How you doin, sweetheart?"

Something about him made her step a little closer to Leon. Krauser, Leon thought, scaring girls since the dawn of time. Jill said, "Ease off, Jack. She's a child."

Leon told them, "This is Manuela. We're just getting acquainted."

Manuela told them, softly, " I had my quinceañera a year ago. I am sixteen."

Her English was stilted, showing a short grasp of it. Jill nodded and gestured with her head, "I know this is a lot to ask. But did you come from the mansion?"

The girl nodded, glancing between them, "I don't know what is happening. Please. Will you take me to safety?"

Krauser laughed, dryly, "You kidding? We need you to take us to Javier."

Manuela shook her head. She denied them, backing up. "I can't. No. I can't. The villagers? What has become of them?"

Jill put a hand out to her, attempting to soothe her, "They're dead. I'm sorry. We can stop it. Manuela? If you take us to Javier, we can stop it from spreading."

Manuela glanced at Leon. He put his gloved hand out to her, palm up, "I'll protect you. I swear. Just like you did for me. But Amparo is lost."

Manuela narrowed her eyes and shook her head, "This not Amparo. This is just a fishing village outside. I-" She took a long breath. She finally put her hand in Leon's and added, "I will take you to Amparo. It is all I can do now...for what was lost here."

Jill glanced at Leon as he led the girl toward the boats on the edge of the dock. He helped her in and Krauser took the controls of the motor. Jill took a seat at bow beside Manuela. As the boat hit the open water, the jungle stretched wide and glowing before them. A beautiful place, if you didn't know what waited inside.

As Jill reached one handed for her pack to treat her arm, Leon asked, "Do you want me to help? It might be easier."

She nodded and he accepted the pack she handed him to bring out supplies to treat her arm. Manuela watched them as he worked, cleaning the wound and dressing it. She finally asked, over the roar of the engine of the little boat, "Why do you fight? You are young, yes? Barely a man. You should return to your family and marry."

Jill felt her eyes sparkle with amusement above his head where he was binding her arm. He glanced at the girl and smiled, shaking his head, "I'm not that young."

Manuela glanced at Jill and back at him, looking confused, "You are not old." She gestured at Krauser where he steered behind them, "He is old. You are not so old."

Krauser scoffed, "He looks like a twelve-year-old, right? You the same age as this girl, Kennedy? You have the same face."

"Don't be jealous because you look like the back end of a baboon Krauser. It's just genetics."

"Blow me. I wouldn't want to be a skinny pretty girl for anything on Earth. You probably fuck as pretty as you look too. You cry when you fuck a girl, Kennedy? I bet you hold them and weep into their tits."

Leon rolled his eyes. Manuela tried to figure out what he was saying but the slang was clearly hard for her. So she said, "Yes. He is pretty. Like an angel. A guardian." She smiled and told Leon, "You are a handsome guardian angel. I am glad you are here."

Jill watched Leon's profile as she taped her arm. He was young. The face was young. There was no getting around that. But there was something in it that was old. Some knowledge that came from what he'd done and seen and lived. He glanced up to find her watching him. Sweat slid down his forehead. Jill lifted her other hand without thinking to whisk it away before it got in his eye.

Quietly, he told her, "Thanks."

He rose and moved to the bow of the boat with his binoculars to scan the terrain.

Manuela glanced at Jill and back at Leon and speculated, "You are together, yes? What is the word?  _Novio_?"

Jill shook her head as Krauser laughed, "No. Just partners. Not lovers."

Manuela looked confused again. "...when you look at him. It is like being hungry and seeing food...yes?"

Jill had to laugh. She had to. Was that how she looked at him? In fairness, Manuela was probably right. He was something to look at. She enjoyed watching his ass even now as the boat skimmed the water and took them toward danger. If she had to be in the boiling jungle, there were uglier things she could be looking at. The thing about it? You didn't cover The Executioner. He wasn't the type of guy you got a crush on.

He was the type of guy who  _crushed_ you for looking.

She had to remember that while he was standing in the sunshine looking like a model on a breezy beach. He was a killer. If she threatened him, he'd take her down and destroy her.

Manuela called, softly, "There is a sewer up ahead. It is where I was led through to escape. It will take us toward the mansion."

The boat slid through the water. Above them, a huge dam sported the vision of the mansion in question waiting as a mythological castle atop a harrowing rise. Leon scanned it with the binoculars. Krauser mused, "We could scale it, right? Just go right up?"

Leon shook his head, "None of our gear can get us up that. And there's no useable climbing surface. We have to try the tunnel. If we follow the water channel, it should lead us right to the surface."

Jill glanced up at the sky above them. "We're losing daylight. Do we want to head in or make camp first?"

Leon considered and looked at Manuela who told them, "There are fewer patrols during the day time. They change shifts around dawn."

Krauser gave her a cool glance and wondered, "How do you know that?"

She told him, quietly, "No one notices a captive I think. I watched. I learned."

Krauser nodded, looking somewhat impressed. Jill told her, "Good. Let's make camp. Can you tell us what you know?"

"...yes." Manuela glanced at Leon nervously, "My English..." She lifted her hands in distress.

He told her, " _No te preocupes, yo soy fluido_."

Manuela nodded in relief. Jill smiled briefly at her and patted her leg. Krauser turned the boat ashore and they shifted out of it. A short walk found them able to lay claim to an abandoned cabin that had likely once housed one of the townspeople that had fished the river. It had a narrow cot and a big comfy chair. The thing was clean but spartan. Jill set her pack on the table inside and pulled out supplies.

A small cast iron skillet had Leon arching his brows as she told him, "You have to eat sometimes. You think I want to live entirely off of canned meat?"

Manuela poked around the cabin and made a face at the toilet behind a vinyl shower curtain. She muttered, in Spanish, about peeing in front of  _"El extraño gran hombre"_. Both he and Jill smirked. Clearly, she meant Krauser.

As if he heard them thinking, Jack poked his head in the cabin. "You women can have the four walls. I'm gonna stand guard outside. Unless..." He considered and added, "You want this girl to stay with you? What do you think, Kennedy? You got enough hair to join in on the braiding. You wanna paint toenails and giggle with these girls all night?"

Leon glanced at Jill who rolled her eyes. Manuela, frowning, answered, "Are you angry that you have no hair? It happens when you get old, yes?"

Krauser gave her a droll expression. Jill coughed to clear her throat. Leon didn't even bother. He just grinned until Krauser snapped the door shut. His grin turned down a notch as he told Jill, quietly, "I don't like how he looks at her."

Jill gave him a cold expression where Manuela couldn't see her, "Me either. He won't touch her. I promise you."

To both of their surprise, his hand shifted and gripped her arm, lightly, above the elbow. He squeezed once, "He'd have to get through me first. We'll sleep in shifts. You and Manuela sleep for as long as you can."

Jill nodded. After a moment, they both realized he hadn't let go of her arm. He did, swiftly, and muttered, "...sorry."

Before he could turn, Jill caught his forearm and stopped him. She told him, with feeling, "Don't be. I'm not scared of you. You're not an animal. Not like him."

Leon's eyes volleyed over her face. He glanced at the girl in the corner poking around in the one dresser that waited there. And he answered, gruffly, "You should be. We're both animals. He just doesn't pretend he isn't."

"And you do?"

"I'm the Executioner. I can be whatever they tell me to be."

They held gazes until she asked, "Do you really believe that?"

"They made damn sure I did. I'm just as much a monster as the man outside, I promise you."

Jill shook her head. She leaned a little closer until their noses brushed and whispered, "You keep telling yourself that. But he tried to put his hands on me while I slept. You didn't. You're not like him."

Leon swept his eyes back and forth across her face again before he answered. She liked how he looked at her, direct, no bullshit, even as he returned, "Maybe I didn't touch you...but I looked."

Jill, without missing a beat, replied softly, "So did I. While you were half naked? I looked too."

His brow winged up as Manuela made a sound of excitement to have located some clean clothes in one of the drawers. He glanced down at Jill's bosom in her tank top. And she liked that too as he queried, "Yeah? Why? There's not much to look at anymore."

Jill tilted her head to see if he was serious. He was. So she simply said, "Chics dig scars. Haven't you heard? Let me know if you want to compare some time."

She let go of his arm to move across the room to help Manuela. Leon rolled his neck to pop it. He left them to their privacy and went to join Jack outside.

Krauser was watching the treeline as he cleaned his guns. Leon took up a spot on the ground across from him. They cleaned weapons and sat in comfortable silence. After a handful of moments, Krauser finally spoke, "Maybe you should tell me what you know about B.O.W.S."

Leon glanced up from cleaning his knife. "Alright."

Whatever else was true, Krauser was here to do a job. To do that, he had to know what he was fighting. Leon tugged a small notebook out of his back pocket and tossed it to him, "Those are my notes from the last few years on anything and everything I saw. You want the cliff notes version or you wanna read it yourself?"

Krauser settled down and put his back against a tree. He opened the little notebook and answered, "Watch the trees, princess, and let me do some studying."

Leon smirked a little and kept on cleaning his knife. Good, bad, or otherwise Krauser was on their side here. That meant playing nice with each other until that was no longer an option.

He glanced toward the window of the little cabin. He could hear the sound of a pipe groaning as they turned on the little shower inside. The soft tinkle of Manuela's laughter trickled on the breeze as the trees rustled gently.

Somehow, Jill had gotten her to laugh.

Somehow, Jill had gotten  _him_ to as well.

He shook his head, glancing off toward the mansion in the distance and he wondered how long it had been since he'd really felt anything real. Hope. Affection. Desire. Humor. His gaze shifted back to the window as Jill passed in front of it to pull a small brown towel from her pack.

She paused. She arrowed her gaze at him as if she'd felt him looking. A bead of sweat slid down her chest into her cleavage. His eyes tracked it and went back to her face. And she didn't look away. She held his heavy gaze with her own. Like a man, she didn't even flinch. And she hadn't flinched looking at him the night before either. He'd never met anyone else like her.

What was it he felt when he looked at her?

They stared at each other until she turned away to move out of view.

Need.

He hadn't felt that in a long time.

He wanted to touch her to see she'd burn him with it. He wanted to see if it hurt to feel her. Not painful, no, good. Sometimes hurt was good, when it came with knowing you'd won. Did he want to win her?

It wasn't that simple.

He glanced back at the window to find her leaning at the edge once more. Why? Apparently, to look at him again. His head tilted. Her mouth twitched. His brows arched in question. And hers?

They bobbled.

And he couldn't stop the smile.

She'd gotten him to laugh. She'd gotten him to smile. She'd gotten him to  _talk._

It wasn't as simple as wanting to win her. For now? He'd settle for just knowing she was there, beyond that door, and waiting.


	10. Chapter 10

**BOOK ONE: IN PLURIBUS UNUM**

* * *

**Episode 10: The Fear That Fuels Us**

* * *

**Raccoon City, 1998**

* * *

The heavy sound of her breathing was loud in the quiet darkness. Hunkered, hunched, and hiding Jill couldn't do anything but tremble in fear. The gun in her hand had four bullets. Four. The number of times she'd felt herself taste fear.

Four - the number of times she'd lain in a man's arms and not been empty.

Four - the seconds that ticked off before a kiss became really good.

Four - the amount of tears she'd cried since she'd walked into a nightmare.

One slid down her face now as her breath hitched. She could hear _it_ out there walking around the alley. It was hunting her. It was her mortal enemy. It was her bane. It was her punishment for staying when she should have run with Chris.

It was her _Nemesis._

Her chest hurt from where it had stabbed her. She was losing blood and losing her mind and felt sick. Jill sagged against the stone and listened to it pace outside and wait for her. All she had to do was go around the corner and it would all be over.

She could rest.

Finally.

Jill closed her eyes and prayed for any kind of peace.

She raised that gun with those four bullets and turned that corner.

It came for her with a stumbling run and a roar. It trumpeted its battle cry into the boiling dark. The smoke swirled around it as the fire parted as if to allow it passage. It roared for her blood.

She answered the thunder of that with her own. No more fear. She was tired of hiding.

She was tired of running.

It was time to fight or die.

There was no hope left.

* * *

**Outside Amparo, 2002**

* * *

She came awake fighting. The hands trying to soothe her slapped over her mouth. The other one pinned her arms above her head as a voice rumbled, "Easy. Easy. It's a dream."

Was it?

Her skin prickled with fear. Her breathing was choppy. Her eyes flared and rolled like an animal scenting its predator. Above her, Leon held her terrified gaze as he held her down and whispered, gruffly, "Easy. I'm not gonna hurt you. Breathe. You'll wake Manuela."

She knew that.

She wasn't sure what it was that made her aware that he'd keep his word. He wasn't a good guy. He was The Executioner. His body count was legendary. He killed like the Nemesis in her dream - without mercy, without regret, without stopping. Why wasn't she afraid of him?

Her chest throbbed from the old wound long gone.

Their gazes held in the humid darkness. Her skin was slick with sweat from the nightmare and the heat. He felt surprisingly cool where he was pressed against her. Jill finally nodded and his hand slid off her mouth.

But he kept holding her down at the wrists.

She whispered, hoarsely, "I'm alright. I'm sorry. You could hear me outside?"

He said nothing for a long moment. She wasn't even sure he was going to answer until he just..did. "No."

Jill scanned his steely countenance with her eyes, "...alright. Did you need to take a shower or something?"

Again, no answer. The hand on her mouth had slid down her throat. It hesitated and then pressed against her chest, open palmed, above her still heaving bosom. The leftover dregs of fear curled against something just as painful. Her breath caught instead of labored. He enjoyed feeling her heartbeat. It was as if he was drawn to it; a moth to a flame.

She absolutely could not look away as he felt her racing heart and murmured, softly, "I can't remember what it feels like."

So quiet. They were so quiet. It was hard to remember they weren't alone in the dark. Jill rasped, "What?"

He looked up from where his hand lay and back to her face as he told her, "Fear."

Jill trembled a little as her skin prickled. The intensity on him was drowning. His face was so young, so utterly beautiful in a way, and yet the eyes. The eyes were as old as the hills and filled with so much that she couldn't understand. What she'd seen and done...it was nothing to what he'd survived. The little intel they had on him told the story of a man without past, a man without a conscience, and a warrior made from heavy conditioning and programming.

If he'd been the Nemesis, he wouldn't have been any more of a machine.

She knew that.

You didn't play games with The Executioner. You didn't try to woo him or win him or want him. You didn't run from him or try to fight him. Four bullets wouldn't save you. Four seconds wouldn't spare you. Four bodyguards wouldn't help you.

It was best, if he came for you, to just...round that corner and make your stand.

No hope left.

Young. He was. A handful of years younger than her in fact. But he wasn't. The flesh and the soul were two entirely different ages.

So she murmured, "What _can_ you feel?"

And he answered her again, surprising her, "I don't know anymore."

Into the swirl of surreal quiet, Jill informed him, "You're still holding me down."

Without missing a beat, Leon returned, "I know. Do you want me to let you go?"

A loaded question. Time seemed to still. It seemed to get pregnant with all the things between them. Every time she looked at him, she remembered the worst 100 days of her life. Every time she thought of him, she remembered fighting him in that pit and feeling the incredible rush of blood in her body like nothing she'd ever known.

What would it be like to feel that again?

Dangerous?

He'd let her go if she said yes. He wasn't there to kill her. Not yet. Not now. Maybe soon. But not _yet._

Jill finally, finally, finally shook her head no.

His hand stayed over her chest to feel that rapid thunder of her heart. They just kept looking at each other in a way that was both somehow desperate and raw and empty. Mirrors of the other and a life that seemed long ago. Two babies born in blood in a city without hope. Two soldiers who'd sought the skills to make sure the world never again became a necropolis. Two warriors who'd survived the torture and truth that had made them unequaled.

Part of him craved what he'd lost with Claire to be who he was. Part of him hungered for that softness, that hope, that light and love and long days in quiet sunlit summers filled with each other. The memory of a boy who'd never had a chance to find happiness after the battle of his life. He'd protected Claire. He'd loved her. He'd left her a different man than he'd come home. The hazy recollection of that boy who'd escaped a burning city was butterfly wings in his head - flapping and sending ripples over placid skies. He could remember loving her. He just couldn't _feel it anymore._

But this he could feel.

He could feel the heartbeat of the woman beneath him. He'd come in to check on them. He'd never intended to stay. He'd somehow found himself sitting beside her sleeping form on the bed. She'd slept on her side, curled away from the world toward the wall like even here, now, she'd reject it. He understood that. How many nights had he fallen asleep sitting against the wall with a gun in his lap facing the door?

Sometimes there was no rest for the weary.

He'd checked on Manuela to find her peacefully resting on her belly like a child, snoring.

He'd turned to leave.

And sat down beside Jill instead. He'd told her he and Jack weren't different. Even now, Jack was awake and alert and watching for danger. Leon hadn't slept at all. He was aware that Jack was likely as much a threat to the women as any other predator. They'd sat against opposite trees and stared at each other in the dappled darkness. At one point, Jack had broken the silence to say, "You don't really think you could stop me if I wanted to go in there, right?"

And Leon had answered, "You ready to find out?"

So Jack had closed his eyes on a snort and gone to sleep.

They weren't all that different.

He'd sat at Jill's back on the bed and he didn't touch her. But he wanted to. He wanted to slide his hand down her back and over the curve of her ass and turn her into him. He could be gentle if he tried.

He was a good lover. He made sure a woman was satisfied when the needs of his body turned him toward finding himself between the thighs of one. He wasn't an animal like Jack about taking them to prove he was stronger.

Unless they asked him to.

He'd had women grunt and curse and talk likes whores and beg for it. He'd given it to them as they'd wanted. Filthy. Ugly. Fucking in dirty bar bathrooms and pinning them to the bed like a hole waiting for him to fill it. There were those who liked to be subjugated and used. He knew that.

Did she?

He wanted to fight her.

It was an odd feeling. Because their short tussle played through his head like a movie. He'd been alive. Alert. Aroused.

He wanted to fight Jill Valentine to feel that again.

So his heart would race just as hers was.

Quietly, he wondered, "Are you still scared? I won't hurt you."

Jill studied his face in the shadows. He was so calm. He was so curious. Like she was a puzzle whose pieces just didn't fit for him. Was it part of the genius thing? Or the brainwashing they'd likely done to him?

So, she told him, "No. Why?"

"Your heart. It's still pounding."

Oh.

Her mouth curved up at one side and she breathed, "Because you're touching me."

Leon's head tilted, just a little, as he asked, "How do I feel it too?"

Jill thought there was nothing in the world she wanted more than to make his heart do the same. So she instructed, "Let go of my hands."

He did. Instantly. No hesitation.

And she added, "Lean down."

He did that too.

Her belly jerked and quivered. She liked how simple he made it. Her fingers lifted to his face. She touched his mouth and his nose, she skimmed her thumbs over his eyebrows. Gentle.

So, it's soft, he thought. She liked a man to be soft with her. He was happy to ob-

Her hand gripped a hunk of his hair. She harshly pulled him toward her. And he reacted. As simple as the move was the reaction. His left palm curled around her throat to pin her to the bed. His other reached for the knife on his vest and she grabbed that wrist to roll it up his back, hissing, "Don't. You can't feel it if you fight me."

Was she right?

Her back arched. She kept his arm behind his back and the other in his hair. It hurt enough that his scalp throbbed. But pain wouldn't do the job. He could handle pain. The hand at her throbbed squeezed, so gently, carefully. He could feel her carotid thumping against his thumb.

He told her, "I could still kill you like this."

Jill nodded. She put their mouths a whisper away as she answered, "But you don't want to. Dead, I can't help you feel anything. You don't want to hurt me..."

She eased her throat harder into his hand. His fingers closed enough to flare her eyes above it. He could smell her. The smallest squeeze set her already racing pulse to hammering so hard it was almost audible.

Leon breathed, "Are you afraid now?"

Jill's mouth curved against his in a smile, "Not even close."

He started to squeeze harder and she humped toward him. It sent him sideways and she rolled him quietly beneath her on the bed. She echoed what he'd done to her and pinned his arms above his head. He let her, fascinated as if she were a snake charmer and he her eager serpent.

Jill leaned down until their mouths were brushing again and asked, "Where's your knife?"

Surprised, Leon glanced down to find his vest empty. Before he could answer, Jill asked again, "Where is it... _Executioner_?"

He started to break her hold of his wrists above his head and Jill rolled left and off him to the floor. Soundless. Neither made a peep of noise. He sprang to his feet and she put the point of his knife against his own groin from where she was crouched on the ground.

The moonlight winked off the blade as she looked up the line of his body at him. One tiny knick and she'd open his femoral artery. He'd bleed out in moments. She wasn't after stabbing his dick. She was after bleeding him dry.

Even trying to grab her could spell the end of him.

His heart thunked painfully.

Jill tilted her head, watching his face, "How's that? You feel it now?"

Leon answered, hoarsely, "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"See? Even the Executioner is afraid to die."

Jill flipped the knife and offered it to him at the hilt. Leon took it, whipping his eyes all over her face as she added, softly, "I'm not afraid of you. You might be bigger than me, but we served the same master once. I can handle my own."

His hand snaked out. It grabbed the side of her face and his fingers curled around the back of her skull to tug her up to him. He leaned down over her and demanded, "If that's true, why is your heart still pounding?"

Jill leaned up, just a little, and their lips pressed together - once - almost chastely. His chest seized tightly and answered the thump of his own pulse. As he let go of her, she confessed, "That's why. You know it. I know it. Sometimes the only thing that keeps us alive is chasing what could kill us."

He started to - what? Reach down and what? Take her? Her breath seized and her mouth went dry in anticipation. And a small voice murmured, " _Hijo de la chingada."_

Manuela was awake. Leon turned to find the girl watching them. She blinked and wondered, "What does this face mean?"

Jill tilted her head, "Whose face?"

She pointed at Leon and frowned, "He is angry that he loves you, yes?"

Leon shook his head and turned toward the shower area. "I'm going to rinse the grime off before we get moving."

He pulled the shower curtain. Manuela watched his shape beyond the heavy vinyl. All shadows, but you could tell he was stripping. She tucked her knees up as the water fired on. The big t-shirt she wore was white and thrown over the dress she'd worn the day before. Jill had done her best to rinse the blood from the dress because the shorts they'd found would never have fit on her thin frame.

After it was clear he was showering, she looked at Jill, "He is not so simple, I think."

Jill nodded and scooped her hair up to ponytail it as she reached for her holster and boots. "Not even a little. Manuela, that? That wasn't love."

Manuela gave her a confused face. "No? He looks at you with such...what is word?" She struggled and finally said, " _Solo está sediento de cariño_."

Jill paused. She considered that. What had she said? He just hungers for affection. Was the Executioner...lonely?

Manuela smiled sweetly at her. "You should get in shower. He is very naked in there. He would like your kisses, I know."

Jill smiled, unable to stop herself. She was charmed by this girl they'd found singing to monsters. She shook her head and answered, "I don't think he'd like them nearly as much as you think. And we have a job to do. Do you need to rest more?"

Manuela shook her head as she rose. "No. I am rested. You look warm. In the face. Much pink on the cheeks."

Well, Jill thought, that happened when you got turned on playing dangerous games with an overly sexy, potentially dangerous, possible ally. Jill gave Manuela a narrow-eyed expression laced with amusement, "You're too smart for your own good, I think. You might not speak the language, but you understand things just fine."

Manuela giggled a little.

It was nice to feel just a little normal. Jill shook her head in amusement as the door was tossed open and Krauser emerged into the small cabin, "You ladies done with your sleepover? We're burning moonlight while you two share stories about your periods and paint your nails."

He was a pig. There was no other word for it. Jill rolled her eyes, "You sure you're not a girl, Jack? Only one of us seems to be having PMS at the moment."

He ignored her completely and instructed, "Kennedy! When you're done shaving your legs in there, how about we get a move on? I ain't gettin any younger and you ain't gettin any prettier."

He paused and glanced over at Manuela to add, "Although I guess you think he's pretty enough, huh sweetheart? You wanna climb in the shower and help him ease his tension?"

Manuela looked away and shook her head. Jill told him, "If you think he's so pretty, get in that shower with him yourself, Jack."

"Sorry, dollface, but I like my meat a little more tender." Jack leaned over to sniff at Jill's shoulder. Manuela made a face like he was gross or offensive. Jill just arched her brows at him as he finished, "You wanna take a shower with me? You look like a dirty girl."

Ugh.

The water cut off behind the curtain. Jill felt the corners of her mouth turn up in a snide, tight smile. "I like my meat prettier, Jack. Maybe you should have traded some of those steroids for a hair transplant."

"Why? So I can be pretty like your girlfriend in there?"

Jill laughed, dryly, "He's not just pretty. He has a huge dick too."

Krauser scoffed and leaned away from her. "So do I."

"Hard to believe when we both know the juice turns your junk to raisins. Next time I want to fuck a thumb though, I'll give you a call."

"I'm about to juice on your raisins, sweetheart, and show you what my junk can do."

"Always the fucking gentleman, Jack."

Manuela cringed. Jill just laughed. And the curtain made a metallic whoosh as Leon stepped out from behind it. With his hair peeled back from his face, he managed to look impossibly young and fresh. Manuela looked at Jill to grin and bobble her brows.

Leon strapped on his shoulder holster with one brow arched as his gaze jumped between them. "What?"

Jill shook her head. Krauser laughed and rolled his eyes, "Just dealing with our guide here hitting on me. What can I say? I have that affect on women."

Leon kept his expression bored and locked his vest in place on his chest. "Oh, I have no doubt that's true, Krauser. Like a kick in the crotch that never ends."

Krauser opened the door to the cabin and returned, "Oh, if I'm near their crotch, they're begging that it never ends."

Jill looked like she'd barf. Manuela, thank god, couldn't follow the slang enough to get it. Leon gestured with his head at Jill and she helped Manuela up from the bed. After a moment, Leon reached into his pack to remove a black kevlar vest. Surprised, Jill watched him as he moved to strap Manuela into it.

He spoke in fluent and rapid Spanish. He was telling her it was a spare, it was for her protection, and that she should never, ever take it off. He showed her the small knife strapped to the front and how to pull it. He gave a brief instruction on how to wield it.

Manuela nodded quickly and enthusiastically. To show her appreciation, Manuela carried Jill's small canteen and binoculars around her neck. She stepped out into the coming dawn as Leon slung his own pack onto his back and paused.

Jill was watching him quietly.

Curious, he arched a brow.

She shook her head and started out the door.

He was a mystery to her. There were so many layers. A hard, a cold man, a man missing pieces - that gave away his spare body armor to skinny frightened girls. Whatever else he was, he wasn't just a killer.

* * *

**Water Access Point - Outside Amparo- 2002**

* * *

Inside the water channel, the tunnel was cool and dark. Small yellow patches of lighting graced their walk up narrow stone stairs. As they moved, Manuela stayed in the middle between him, Krauser, and Jill.

Leon took the rear while Krauser took point.

Into the quiet, Krauser said, "You're probably used to taken it in the rear, Kennedy."

Manuela looked confused again. Jill rolled her eyes. Leon returned, "Focus on the mission, Jack, and stop thinking about my ass."

To Manuela, Jill instructed, "The important part here is to remember to do everything we say, ok? Stick close. Don't get brave."

Manuela nodded energetically. She told them about the water channel in Spanish. Jack stopped breaking balls to listen. As she finished, he told her, "Whatever you do, don't get stupid. We can't protect you if you run off scared."

Manuela nodded again, "I won't run. I promise."

They stepped into a wide circular stone room with water gathered on the cold floor. It poured down from the floor above. Aloud, Krauser mused, "This must be the discharge channel."

Jill started to say something and there was a rustle of sound from the wall at the point where light had started to leak through the tunnel near the ceiling. They all saw it coming - squat with long arms that scraped as it moved, clinging to the wall like the bug it tried to be. It was painfully skinny, looking more like bone and blade than flesh and blood. It was reddish and yellow, chittering as it scurried and leaped almost gracefully toward them.

Krauser called, "What the _fuck_ is that!?"

And it landed in the water near them.

They opened fire almost simultaneously as Krauser added, "Somebody took their diet a little too far. Nothing _worse_ than a skinny bitch with attitude."

It was thrown back through the water in a spray of blood as they blasted it off its feet. It squealed like a pig and its razor sharp legs whipped wildly before it went still. Krauser kicked it with his boot and remarked, "This your sister, Kennedy? You guys have the same body type."

Leon rolled his eyes and gestured toward the archway beside the water. They started to head through when there was moan from behind them. The tunnel was full now. It was full of zombies.

They moaned. They shambled. They were bleeding and rotting and wearing old construction hats and pieces of heavy equipment gear. They were slow, until they scented prey, and then?

They started running like the ones in the village.

Jack waved them through the archway. Leon commanded, "Go! No! Jill!"

She somehow knew what he wanted. She grabbed Manuela's arm to force her into a run with her. They turned down the tunnel and started running full tilt. They emerged out of a narrow hallway into another rushing waterway.

Manuela said, "Up those stairs! To the ladder!"

Jack went first, Jill and Manuela hurried next, and Leon was shortly behind them but the ceiling started shrieking. No. Not the ceiling - _the hoard of monsters gathered on it like a hive of bees._

They ran. Jill sprayed the ceiling with her machine gun.

But it didn't matter.

The hoard dropped down en masse.

And there was nothing left to do but spray and pray.

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All nerd stuff brought to you by the internet (does anyone actually think I know anything about the rain forest or the interdigitations of the human skull? Ok...well I do now).


End file.
